It is a warm midsummer evening in the city of London in the year 1836. Caroline hears her father whistle outside the house in Chelsea where she is employed. She lays down the book she is reading and, wrapping a light shawl about her, she takes the stairs up to the street. He is standing by the wrought-iron fence, his manner agitated, skin ashen in the streetlight. ‘Papa, what has happened?’ His eyes will not meet hers. She reaches for his hand to console him and is stung by something. She gasps and sees that her palm has been cut. She seizes his sleeve and withdraws a short knife he is concealing. It is smeared with blood but it is not from the small wound on her hand. ‘What have you done, Papa?’ she asks. ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘There is nothing that can hurt me now ,’ he r eplies, as if it is a diagnosis. And then he is gone, walking away from her. She hurries to ke ep up with him, but sees that it is fruitless. He is in the other world he inhabits, where nothing is familiar , sometimes not even her . The knife is still in her hand. It gives her an ill feeling. What has it done? She wants it gone where it cannot hurt him or anybody else. She walks the short distance to the Thames and flings it into the languid black waters. The next day the story is everywhere. A woman has been murdered on the Battersea Bridge. There are witnesses. A manhunt is underway for the well-known Frenchman Jacques-Louis Colbert, apothecary and chemist. Four days later he presents himself at the police station in Chelsea and admits his guilt. He is imprisoned awaiting trial at the Old Bailey. He refuses all visitors. In the crowded courtroom, the judge sentences him to death by hanging. Jacques-Louis does not raise his head to look at Caroline, or her sister Augusta we eping beside her, before he is borne away by guards. Awaiting the noose at Millbank Prison, he is deemed insane. He is transferred to
Bethlehem asylum for appraisal; the Crown averse to the hanging of madmen. He is insane, Caroline thinks, and it is the first time she has allowed it. He had held her, nurtured her, imagined a bigger world for her. She had failed to underst and that he had become dangerous not only to himself but to other people. How had she let it happen? How is she to find any peace knowing he has done this thing? Through the year that follows, she is a wintering tree unable to respond to spring. She cannot grow new leaves, nor feel the sun or breeze. There is an immense solitude at the heart of her life. There will be no future for her in medicine. No father to assess a suitor and deem him sufficient. He has made their family name infamous. The stain will never leave them. When a letter arrives from the asylum, it is the first word she’s had from him since that full moon night. Ma chèr e Car oline, I feel as if I have been away on a long voyage and I am only now returning. The land I left is greatly changed. I am not sur e wh ere I have been but I know I have don e terrible things. The pain of this is indescribable. I do not ask for your for giveness. If you harbour any vestige of affection for me, I beg you to do away with it. For get me , my beloved daughte r, and encourage your sister to do the same. Read the words that follow and know them not as exculpation but as both a reckoning and a warning to you both. She wor e a blu e bonnet and a dress of light blue muslin. We stopped at a pub wher e we liked to have a gin and cloves, which she favour ed. The lanterns wer e lit as we strolled acr oss the bridge. She was gazing at a group of men gather ed about a fire, their fishing boats pulled up on the shor e of the Thames. A bar ge was gliding upriv er in the moonlight. I took the knife fr om my pocket. I might have held her in my arm s and kissed her , for she was dear to me, as you know . But instea d, when I embraced her , I sank the knife into the sweet part of her neck, above the collarbone. It wa s an easy thing, the blade very shar p, the skin very soft, the vein at the
ready . She gasped, cried out, and I withdr ew the knife. Instead of guiding her to help, I st epped away and left her ther e. When I awoke days later , in som e dank place upriver , I knew then what had been done. I knew that within me ther e was another self who d eparted from reality and returned days later uncertain, ravaged. I had tried to walk my loathing for him out of myself. I had tried to draw him close that I might know him better , but he was not to be befriended. You ar e familiar with that man. I was insensible, insane. I had intended the knife for myself. She had made a fool of me. Any man would have done the same. But I cannot excuse myself with such inventions or explanations. The trut h is, I had imagined myself in love. Worse than that, I had imagined that I was loved. When it proved to be untrue, and I found I had been blind and deluded, I took her life. May you and your sister never again know such a man as I. From he who was once privileged to call himself your lovin g father , Jacques-Louis Auguste Henri Colbert
Caroline examines a map. The eastern and western spheres of the world resemble two orbs of an amulet. She sees, to the far left, Great Britain. How unlikely that it is so small. France dominates it. All of Europe dominates it. She thinks of her father saying, ‘The British are never to be underestimated. Look what they have done with so little.’ She sees North America and, passing over the words Hudson Bay , her hand moves down to Florida , Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea . How easy it is to travel on a map. Amazonia , Brazil and South Atlantic Ocean. Alert to the danger of approaching footst eps, her gaze lingers on a finger of land as far south as that continent stretches. She has heard stories of the Magellan Straits and Cape Horn. Tales of men shipwrecked and rescued after months of living on seabirds. Men who drew sticks to see who would be eaten next. She considers the notion of eating a friend. Perhaps it would be easier than eating a stranger . She moves her hand back to Europe , across Arabia , Hindoostan and the great landmass of Asia until it rests on the autumn leaf of New Holland . It is almost as big as Europe, but without cities or history. She wonders what it smells of there. Prisoners, she imagines. And there she finds it, at the edge of the Western Hemisphere, a black mark at the 30 th latitude smaller than a flea. Norfolk Island . The dream returns. Her father caught in a shaft of sand. The walls are collapsing and he is reaching up, calling her name. Tante Henriette is at the doorway indicating they must d epart. She is sporting a neat black beard, cravat and frock coat, and carrying a satchel. Caroline quickly rolls up the map and slides it into a long leather cylinder beside the desk. She swings it over her shoulder . Her aunt raises an eyebrow but says nothing. Downstairs the party is continuing in the ballroom. Music, dancing, conversation, all receding as they stroll past unnoticed. They meet no one as they st ep from a side door into Belgravia, and they are away .
Back at Tante Henriette’ s apartment, they shed their wigs and shoes, frock coats, braces, collars and cufflinks. They peel away beard and moustache. They brush out their hair and pin it up, then button and lace their dresses. Caroline makes chocolat chaud in two silver cups and carries them on a tray into the sitting room. As she sits she sighs de eply, her body settling after the evening’ s activities. Tante Henriette places a polished wooden box on the low table. It is finely carved with a budding vine of gold entwined around a pattern of squares. Caroline opens it to reveal ebony and ivory pieces laid on green velvet. The horses look as if they are rearing in the wind. The robes of the cler gymen each bear a tiny crucifix. ‘Beautiful,’ she whispers, examining the pieces. ‘From tonight?’ ‘ Bien sûr ,’ says Tante Henriette and begins to set up the game. Despite making London her home for many years, Henriette prefers her native tongue. Caroline has moved between French and English all her life. They each lead with a pawn, then Tante Henriette brings out her bishop. As Caroline weighs her next move, she describes the dream of her father being swallowed by sand, his hand reaching out to her . ‘You have had such a dream before?’ her aunt asks. ‘Several times now,’ says Caroline. ‘The same dream. The sand. His face.’ ‘The map? Did you think it could lead you to him?’ Caroline says nothing. ‘Sometimes,’ says Henriette, ‘I see him in the fields walking between the vines. A boy again. Strange, non ? Though it is best not to think of him; what good can it do?’ Caroline moves her knight, and her aunt responds by moving another pawn. Caroline loves the loyalty of the smallest pieces. They could easily be disregarded in the face of more powerful players. Yet they remain obstinate and steadfast in a battle waged to defend an ideal. She says, ‘There are offers of passage for unmarried women to New South Wales and Van Diemen’ s Land.’ Her aunt arches an eyebrow . ‘You are not still considering that?’ ‘I am,’ says Caroline. ‘But why?’ asks Tante Henriette. ‘He will never be released—and even if he was, he will not be the man you remember .’
‘It is nothing to do with him ,’ says Caroline, progressing her attack on the board, keenly aware of her aunt’ s greater skill. ‘Then why would a young woman of your talents take herself to such a place? Hardly to raise she ep, I think.’ Caroline does not want to admit to the fear that has shadowed her of late. The cry of ‘Police!’ at a most unexpected or inconvenient moment. ‘Of course,’ continues her aunt, ‘someone of military rank may offer his hand. Perhaps he is blind in one eye from a wound he took for England as a young man. It oozes and smells. He has the gout, too ... and four or five very ugly children in need of a new mother ...’ She takes Caroline’ s knight. Caroline admonishes herself for her lapse in attention. She stares at her pieces. But her mind is thinking of the map. Atlantic Ocean , Indian Ocean , Pacific Ocean. ‘You could come with me,’ Caroline says. ‘And be without my ladies to take me on their tours of Europe? ’ r eplies Henriette. ‘Without the shops and cafes and theatres of London and Paris that bring me so much pleasure? I have no wish to see these fingers dirtied by potatoes.’ ‘We have enough, though, don’ t you think?’ ‘A sweet notion, but if we are to forgo our ways, enough must last us a very long time.’ ‘Still ...’ Caroline says. ‘This wriggling worm of loyalty , it is making you restless.’ Caroline does not r eply . ‘I assure you, dear Caroline, there is no debt you must r epay,’ says Henriette, her voice kinder now. ‘The past is not something that can be left behind, but nor is it wise to carry it ever upon your shoulders.’ For some time there is only the drinking of chocolat and the quiet movement of pieces. ‘I could advertis e,’ Caroline says at last. ‘Young woman of disr eputable family seeks rich husband for colonial adventure.’ ‘Young woman of unique talents seeks a man unworthy of her character ,’ says Tante Henriette. ‘And you must remember to beware the strong man offering you his hand, Caroline. Your father was one of those ...’ Caroline sees she is entangled in a series of strategies her aunt has employed and feels momentary dread. She moves her queen out of danger,
only to realise that she should have moved her king. Henriette says, ‘If you go, you must invent a new story .’
Caroline meets Captain Willem de Hoog in his offices near the Hudson River. His ship, the Alliance , a brigantine of one hundred and twelve feet, is soon to d epart for South America and the Pacific island of Otaheite. De Hoog is a Dutchman with a bald pate and narrow silver eyes. He was a merchant in China and California before embroiling himself in the commerce of New York. In this city of wealth, filth and relentle ss industry , there are many people whose knowledge of the world surprises him, yet the young woman seated before him is particularly intriguing. Caroline is wearing a dress of black silk, a black bonnet and a silver cross about her neck. Although she has found New York intoxicating, and learned to be at ease with her new identity , she has remained vigilant. London is but a few weeks across the ocean and there are frequent arrivals. ‘I have the means to make a modest investment in the journey , if your ship were to continue on from Otaheite to Van Diemen’ s Land,’ she says. ‘I believe you have some experien ce in acquiring a suitable cargo of goods, Captain de Hoog?’ Captain de Hoog regards her, and she is a pleasure to regard with her youthful prettiness: the dark curls and attentive gaze; the dimple he glimpses in her left cheek. How had she acquired her head for business? The black man standing guard outside his office also intrigues him. Servant or slave, he cannot be sure, but he is well dressed and clearly a formidable protector of the petite Mrs Douglas. ‘Does Mrs Douglas have any hesitation in investing in sugar and rum? Coffee? Salt?’ She does not. But she would require a comfortable cabin. The most spacious he can make available. She will also require a servant, a maid. ‘And your manservant?’ he asks. ‘Jefferson will remain here,’ she says. ‘I see,’ says Captain de Hoog. ‘Well, it may not be what you are used to, but there is a capable lad.’
‘A maid would be preferable.’ ‘The boy will do. You will not be displeased. He has been under my instruction for three years and more.’ The captain’s weathered head sits on a long narrow neck, a neck that Caroline finds improbable on one who spends so much time at sea. Where are his tattoos? she wonders. Did he have a rose or a trident upon a forearm? An anchor on his shoulder? Or was he the sort with a naked Aphrodite rising from her shell above his buttocks? What words would he utter, what god might he pray to, what woman does he imagine when the seas threaten to break his ship in two? ‘We do not like to stretch our luck on a voyage more than necessary ,’ the captain adds. Caroline pauses, almost willing to let this pass, but cannot. ‘I suspect, Captain de Hoog, the success of the voyage relies on whether a captain has the skill to bring his ship to harbour without incident rather than the surfeit, or absence, of women aboard.’ The captain offers a wry smile. ‘There you have it, Mrs Douglas. The superstitions of a sea dog. I could beg your forgiveness, although it would hurt me a little to do so, for in my experience superstition is often grounded in fact—aboard a ship, at least.’ Caroline raises her eyebrow , waiting for an example, but he offers none. Instead he says, ‘If the boy does not do all your ladyship requires, he knows the punishment.’ The evening before their d eparture, Caroline alights from a carriage wrapped in a long fur coat and hat. The Alliance is at anchor amongst trading ships, military vessels and ferries. A carpet is quickly laid to assist her crossing the deck. Jefferson carries the trunks, and together they see them safely stowed in the hold before he transfers the remaining luggage, containing her personal items, to her cabin. Jefferson’s assistance in navigating this maritime city of men, ships and cargo has been invaluable. As has his companionship in the sprawling house in Harlem where they have both been employed by the eccentric and adventurous Audubon family this past year. She farewells him, squeezing into his hand a gift, a set of cufflinks with ruby studs, a relic of her life with Tante Henriette. It is a poignant moment, for they are sure they will never see one another again.
After he d eparts, Caroline removes her furs and tidies her hair. The cabin is not large but it is well appointed. The linens are fresh, the wash jug filled and the brass lamps polished, all with particular care. The ship itself has an odour of brine and fish, a smell she understands she must befriend. The captain has invited her to dine with him in his private quarters along with two fellow passengers on their way to Brazil. She has insisted that he refrain from disclosing her intention to travel beyond Otaheite to Van Diemen’ s Land, and her financial interest in the voyage. Señor Clementi wears lace cuffs and has the lined lean face of an aristocrat. The scent of aniseed drifts about him and Caroline suspects it is in his hair oil. He wears a turquoise amulet on a length of dark leather that serves as a necktie. His fingers bear several turquoise rings. He bows when they are introduced and kisses Caroline’ s hand. ‘How fortunate to find ourselves with your companionship, Señora Douglas,’ he says. ‘I am told by the captain that you are in mourning, but beauty must always be noted. I offer my condolences. I know well the pain of the grieving heart. I lost my wife some years ago.’ Despite the man’s charm, Caroline senses in him a r eptilian coldness. His son José is stooped in gait with soft jowls and a stutter that prevents him from speaking easily . His father ignores him. Over a joint of pork, the captain tells Caroline that Señor Clementi and José are bird collectors. Clementi tells her that in Brazil he has collected more than three hundred and eighty species of toucan, macaw, ibis, parakeet, parrot, manakin, curassow, aracari, vulture and rhea. Some three thousand birds in total. Caroline almost speaks of Monsieur Audubon, her recent employer in New York, and his extraordinary illustrated book, Birds of America. But she bites back her words and asks instead, ‘And what do you intend to do with all these birds, Señor Clementi? Are they in an immense aviary?’ José shakes his head in an almost indiscernible gesture but he does not look up. Clementi smiles and says, ‘I doubt you have heard of the Teotihuacanos of New Spain, Señora Douglas? They sacrificed young men to encircle their kings when they died. The birds in my collection are at my home in Madrid, arranged by species, size and colour in many drawers and glass cabinets.
When I am at last laid to rest, they will surround me in a design of ancient significance.’ The following day José’s two sisters and their children board the ship. They are returning to their estates in Brazil. Twelve Jesuit priests are the last to board, standing at the railing as the ship d eparts, black-robed and silent, as if the voyage is to be one of biblical significance. Caroline is twenty-three. Her mother lies in a grave in Chelsea, reunited with baby Isobel who had been lost to a fever at age two. Her sister Augusta lies beside them, taken only the winter before last. Each loss evokes unfathomably painful recollections. Their bones have been left behind. Frost and falling leaves, new grass and sunshine, wind and cloud shadows will be their only visitors now . It is more than eighty years after the birth of Mozart. More than fifty years since America absolved itself of all allegiance to the British Crown. Soon someone will write that ‘ ... it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair , we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going dir ect the other way ... ’ Time curves and bends like a prism through which one may observe a lunar eclipse or calculate the mathematics of an unfolding rose. But what of time and the chalice of the human heart? Surveying the receding city, it is not a biblical story that comes to mind for Caroline, but Scheherazade. A woman who must summon a new story every day in order to live. Caroline will tell the story of how she came to Tasmania, when it was still called Van Diemen’ s Land, many times. She will cast her inventions into the future. Those who carry them on will call it history, but she will call it her life.
The cabin boy’s name is Quill, he tells her, and his movements are quick, as if he is ready for flight at any moment. When he brings her breakfast, she gives him a cloth for his face and makes him scrub his hands. She inspects his head and discovers the anticipated lice in the brown tumble of hair. She requests and receives from him a kettle of hot water, a bottle of oil and a blade. On deck she cuts his hair, and then she shaves his head. He complies, ignoring the cries and jests from the crew as they witness this transformation. Afterwards, he startles at his reflection in her mirror. She insists he go wash his body and return in fresh clothes. ‘You do have fresh clothes, Quill?’ she asks. The boy nods. When he reappears, she says, ‘Now you may bring food and tend to my cabin. But I will inspect your hands and face each day, and I will expect you to be clean.’ As the ship turns south, the sky is heavy with clouds. A piercing wind whips the sea, rain thrums the decks and the coastline evaporates. For two days Caroline steels herself for each dreadful pitch of the ship. She drifts and dreams, gritting her teeth against the rising tide of her stomach, determined not to vomit. Quill carries her slops bucket, r eplenishes her water jug and refills the oil in her lamp. He lays a cool damp cloth upon her brow. She listens to the sea running along the hull beside her bunk and imagines her mother’s fingers running through her hair . ‘Ah, Mousie, you’re a brave lass,’ she hears her mother say . She hears her father murmuring, ‘ With sloping masts and dipping prow ... and southwar d aye we fled ...’ and feels for a moment his presence. ‘Papa,’ she whispers. When she wakes on the third morning, the nausea has passed. Quill brings her broth and a small loaf of bread which she devours, suddenly ravenous.
She leaves her cabin, reeling with the movement of the ship. On deck she finds a malachite sea, marked at the highest tips with white froth as the waves crest and the ship succumbs, falling and climbing, an undulating seas cape. Above them, an army of clouds is moving north. Gulls accompany the ship, broad in wing and graceful in flight, and she thinks briefly of the Spaniard Clementi, but he is nowhere to be seen. Fish jump in schools, fluid as mercury , bright as quicksilver , rising above the waves then diving as one. She observes the horizon, a curve of faded light that conveys what had only been agreed when first Copernicus and then Galileo focused their attention on the heavens: the world is a mighty sphere. The earth is not flat and the oceans do not come to an end with sea monsters and a crescendo of waterfall. Yet what folly it seems to trust to canvas and timber, halyards and sheets, iron and brass. To rely on a compass and a sextant to traverse this blue invitation, calculating their position by invisible magnetic forces and a canopy of stars. She hears her father say, ‘Your future is a catapult you must launch into the sky.’ She hears her mother say , ‘You’d be a fool not to try .’ She stares into the sea and knows she is a thing of little account who would hardly be missed if she tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean. She wonders how Tante Henriette fares. But she puts this thought aside, disturbed for a moment by a parting vision of her aunt. She reflects on the investment she has made in the cargo housed below, and what she might acquire with the proceeds of this venture. There is no retreating now. The sails crack, the rigging whistles, the wind burns chill on her cheeks, and her body learns to gimbal with the ship’ s momentum. At some point Quill comes with a blanket and she wraps it around herself. The captain shouts his orders, the crew respond. Day five passes, day seven, day fifteen, and still they travel south.
Her preference is to be on deck, facing the sombre sea and the keening wind. She is rocked and knocked, buffeted and blown, cradled and lulled. A book of verse allows Caroline the guise of distraction while she observes the sailors’ rituals, the inclinations of her fellow passengers and the hierarchy of the men. The Spanish sisters, Clementi’ s daughters, approach her and attempt to engage her in conversation, inviting Caroline to join them below for cards. They quickly realise she is not to be persuaded. One surr eptiti ously offers her a bottle of Aromes de Montserrat saying that she, too, was widowed young—but she remarried, and look at her now, with three children and another on the way. Caroline thanks her, refusing the bottle gently, saying she finds solace only in her Bible. After this exchange, they offer her the hushed deference only the devout can summon. Her black-garbed demeanour also earns her a muted respect amongst the crew . Early in the voyage she seeks communion from the most senior of the Jesuits. She takes confession, offering her narrative into the ears of the good servant of the Lord, doing exactly as Tante Henriette had instructed: r eplacing the past with inventio n. She receives God’s grace and is forgiven for her sins. On Sundays, the captain leads a service which all attend, crew and passengers alike. Caroline considers one of de Hoog’s greatest achievements is to ke ep these services brief. At first, when Señor Clementi notices her on deck, he comes quickly to her side, taking her elbow with some pretended concern or affection. One morning he tells her that she is too beautiful to be a widow for long. He offers her a book. She finds it is an account of the tribes of Amazonia with illustrations of children and adults, their heads and necks wreathed in feathers and bones, their eyes staring back at her with curious detachment. ‘You have seen these people?’ she asks. ‘Trade has made me a rich man,’ he says. ‘I am willing to go to places other men are not.’
‘They have a dignity ,’ she says, of the people in the drawings. ‘They are all dead,’ he says, ‘so their dignity was of little use.’ She realises he was expecting her to laugh. ‘Señor Clementi,’ she says, ‘forgive me this abruptness, but I intend to use this voyage to grieve my husband. I wish to surrender conversation and companionship for prayerfulness and contemplation. I am sure a man of your sensitivities can understand that.’ After this, he too leaves her alone. In her quarters she boils water from a barrel, plucking out dead mice, squeezing the water out of their soft bodies and stowing them in a jar until she can toss them overboard later. She kills the cockroaches that are also making their way south. She reads the many books she has brought, eats the bland and limited fare of meat, biscuits and porridge. Most of the fresh vegetables have been consumed by now. She rations her stores of marmalade and tea, preserved lemons, pickles, sugar, hard cheese, dried fruit and cacao. She washes her smalls and hangs them to dry on a line she has fixed in her cabin. If a storm is brewing, rats run across her feet in the companionway . After a battle of gale and ocean has been won, the wind in retreat, the sea subdued, she descends into the hold. When she is certain she is quite alone, exc ept for the cats that lurk below decks seeking mice, she hangs a lamp and unlocks the wooden chests. She touches linens and silver, china and jewellery , boxes of herbs, powders, seeds and vials, all that has survived yet another drowning. She meets Señor Clementi’ s daughters in the passageways with their children. She has an urge to reach out and touch a small arm, to offer a riddle or a game that might light up those young faces, but she resists. Sometimes the children’ s cries wake her in the night. On occasion the captain orders her to return to her cabin. Sailors are clambering up masts, crawling along the crossbeams, roping in sails. A bellowing fury descends upon them seeking to whip away anything unfixed. Ocean washes over the railings and swe eps across the deck. During such events, the timbers in her cabin are prone to leakage and she sle eps in damp bedding until she and Quill can carry up the straw mattress, linens and blankets to dry on deck. Together they bail out her room. The restoration of
the ship after such events occurs as a ritual of r eprieve and increases her respect for captain and crew . Another visitation of lightning and thunder has them in its grip. She has invited Quill to stay in her cabin until the worst has passed. She considers the boy and their circumstances, the two of them far from home. ‘A person without family is a person in darkness,’ the boy says, the longest sentence he has uttered in her presence since they set sail. She is stirred by his prescience. His eyes are golden in the lamplight. A faded scar the shape of a crescent moon marks his left cheekbone. Had it been caused by an accident or a fist? ‘We are all capable of darkness, Quill,’ she says. ‘Sometim es it is because we have a family rather than because we do not.’ The boy looks hard at her and she adds, ‘But we must remembe r to urge towards the light. Sometimes it is a daily struggle, the hardest thing we do.’ He blinks, his lashes shadowing his cheeks. They are both gripping timber, she the edge of the cot upon which she sle eps, he the table fixed to the wall. ‘Why are you on this ship, Quill?’ she asks. ‘Given to the captain to settle a debt,’ he r eplies perfunctorily . ‘Your father ’s debt?’ she asks. ‘Yes.’ ‘And where was your home?’ He shrugs as if he has no recollection. She cannot place his accent. A hint of Irish, perhaps. Cork, Cardiff, Boston, New York? Or some other place where gambling men give up their sons? ‘And what of your mother? Does she await your return?’ The boy gives a shake of his head but says nothing. They are nearing the equator . The breeze has steadied and the bilges are pungent. The moon is a swelling ripeness amidst unfamiliar constellations, a blazing omnium gatherum that leaves her awestruck night after night. The air has warmed and softened . By day the sea is peacock blue. She exchanges her garments of wool and fur for the discreet pleasure of light black muslin. When the ship crosses the equator, muskets are fired into the air. The captain is given a dousing, and several officers, too. There is a general mood of merriment amongst the passengers and crew .
Some evenings as she lingers on deck, unwilling to go below, she sees columns of light that appear to plummet to the sea floor. Other times she is enthralled by a swathe of vibrant green phosphorescence that trails the ship. On the upper topsail yard, sailors sing a shanty in Gaelic and others from the Caribbean sing in a language Caroline has never heard, their music hypnotising and bittersweet. She invites Quill to listen to a poem. Afterwards, she hears him r epeating it softly to himself as he sets her cabin to rights. ‘ Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle in the milky way . They str etched in never -ending line Along the mar gin of a bay ... ’
‘I could write a letter for you, to your family ,’ Caroline of fers. Men are mending sails, the blacksmith is taking measurements for some part of the rigging that has broken away. The sea is a slow rolling swell, the breeze a steady sou’easterly . The Spanish women’ s maids have hung out washing to dry. The sailors make fun of the undergarments pinned to the makeshift line, until the Jesuits walk the deck and silence descends. Even the children, playing hide-and-se ek amongst the barrels and rowboats, quell their cries and begin to whisper to one another when the priests are present. Caroline wonders what Quill makes of children his age playing while he is part of the crew. He appears to take little interest in them, as if they are other than him. ‘We could tell them you are doing well. That you have become quite the sailor.’ He shakes his head. ‘Father said not to look back.’ ‘I know what it is to have your life determined by your father,’ says Caroline. The hair on Quill’s head has grown back, a chestnut fur she ke eps trimmed. She wants to run her hand through it as it stands to attention, but she does not. ‘Shall I read to you?’ she asks. He shrugs. She opens a small volume and finds a page. ‘ And now the storm-blast came, And he was tyrannous and str ong; He struck with his overtaking wings, and chased us south along. With sloping masts and dipping pr ow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forwar ds bends his head, The ship dr ove fast, loud r oared the blast,
And southwar ds aye we fled. ’ ‘A ship,’ he says. ‘You can learn the words, Quill. And write words of your own, if you are able to read and write. It will make you more useful, more valuable, than someone who can only fetch and carry .’ He says nothing. ‘Learning will free you from all manner of smallness. And in time, it might be used to gain you something of great importance.’ ‘They call you “the Widow”,’ Quill says. ‘My husband died.’ ‘How?’ ‘He drowned.’ ‘In a storm?’ ‘He fell into the most enormous waterfall you have ever seen.’ ‘Did someone push him?’ ‘No ... Perhaps.’ ‘Nobody wants to die,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ says Caroline. She could record in her journal the hard bread with barely an ounce of butter in a week, the daily measure of lime juice in water that tastes of the pungent barrel from which it was drawn, the precariousness of the weather , the unceasing movement of the ship and the strange thoughts and dreams she is having. She could write of Captain de Hoog, who is both respected and feared by his crew. He takes the whip to those who have broken some sailor’s code or disregarded his authority . She watches a flogging and walks away. The broken skin could use some salve but she does not offer it. She could describe sailors who seem born to this life, and those who appear to have abandoned all feeling, but she does not. The blank pages of the journal seem to require a different kind of honesty from her and she doesn’t want to explore what that honesty might reveal. Instead, she slices the pages away from the binding. On each one she writes a word— apple , mouse , cat , rat , ship , rope— and with varying success draws each item. Quill identifies the objects and she has him practise writing each word in chalk on a tray that makes a useful surface. She encourages him to sound
out the words and then think of another that might be like it. Sail , pail , tail , hail , sea , pea and also tree and bee ... these she writes and he copies. When he is writing well enough, she offers him one of her unused journals. She invites him to inscribe his name below the words she has written: This book belongs to ... Quill , he writes carefully . ‘My name has a porthole at the front,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ says Caroline. ‘Or an eyeglass to see the world.’ Quill’s hand becomes steadier . Each letter of the alphabet takes on a personality that is his alone. He draws numbers. He counts the headsails and staysails, the clews, buntlines and leechlines, the hens, ducks, cows, she ep and goats in the hold. He counts, too, the sacks of grain and tobacco, the boxes and bags of provisio ns, the barrels of water, beer and rum. He draws an iron shackle, a cup, the anchor line, the bowsprit, the sails filled, flying fish skipping across a dappled sea. He runs out of numbers when trying to count the porpoises accompanying them as they move down the coast. The afternoon before they are to make landfall, Caroline meets Señor Clementi in the passageway . She suspects he has been waiting for her to descend. ‘Señora Dougla s, all this time and we have barely spoken. Must you travel on quite so soon? I have a plantation beyond the city where the orange groves are very beautiful. It would be my pleasure to host you there.’ He pauses. ‘If you are running from something, Señora Douglas,’ Señor Clementi continues, ‘I would be happy to shelter you. I am a powerful man. You would wish for nothing.’ ‘Perhaps I would wish for my freedom, Señor Clementi.’ ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘but would you? A woman of spirit is always looking for her match. I find that most compelling.’ He is very close now. He strokes her cheek. An incident in London comes back to her with ferocious clarity . ‘Señor Clement i,’ she says, ‘your proximity gives me the sensation of being traversed by cockroaches. Move away , or I will scream.’ At that moment, Quill’ s head appears in the open hatch above. ‘Señor Clementi,’ he says, ‘there is a condor .’
Señor Clementi moves back and is gone. Caroline leans against the wall, chagrined and weary. A small hand takes hers and she realises it is Quill’s. He has dropped through the hatch to stand beside her . ‘There is a condor?’ she asks, calming her breath. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Just a cockroach.’ The following morning, six miles off the shore of Rio de Janeiro, they are surrounded by fishing birds, the sky filling with dark wings and soaring cries. Clementi has José shoot at them. Many fall into the sea but one falls to the deck and is claimed. Mountain peaks lie ahead and islands rise high and green within the harbour . The heat and clamour of the jungle envelops Caroline, the noise of insects, the scent of flowers. As the ship docks, she feels the city quivering with voices, people, music and lights. She is unexpectedly awash with loneliness, an emotion that has hitherto been k ept at bay. There is no one awaiting her arrival. Yet this voyage had called her. How often she had taken the map from London out of its leather cylinder and traced her fingers across it. To round Cape Horn. To sail the Southern Ocean. She wants to be able to say to herself, ‘I saw that. I was there.’ But perhaps more than that she wants to know herself capable of this. Clementi and his son d epart the ship along with his daughters and their entourage of children and servants. The senior Jesuit and five other priests disembark. One of the remainin g priests offers his services for the ongoing voyage, but Caroline makes no commitment. She has established her disguise. Perhaps there is no need for further pretence. For the weeks the Alliance must r eprovis ion, she takes rooms in a guesthouse Captain de Hoog has recommended. It is high above the city, overlooking the harbour with a view to the Corcovado mountain. Quill accompanies her . In the Botanic Gardens, she is mesmerised by a boulevard of royal palm trees, their trunks patterned with quivering butterflies. The proliferation of flowering plants amazes her, as does the exquisite fragrance of the orchidae. She and Quill sit by the fountain and let the spray settle on their faces. The air vibrates with the wings of insects, the cry of birds, the call of monkeys. They eat pão de queijo bought from street sellers and drink passionfruit
juice. They devour bananas and oranges. Caroline acquires camphor leaves, cinnamon bark, cloves and three dif ferent kinds of p epper for her supplies. When night falls, the boy is awed by the singing of frogs in the gardens, fireflies in the hedges, the haunting cries from the nearby hills. She tells him stories of jaguars, alligator s and parasitic plants. He is startled by the jumping spiders and avoids the long yellow webs that span the pathways. He gently touches lizards on the walls and uses a stick to investigate nests of mud in high corners, running inside when wasps chase him away. He is fascinated by the tiny wings of hummingbirds. ‘There are so many things I do not know ,’ he says. They see Latin ladies in their finery and Catholic priests and merchants, all carried in palanquins by slaves like Egyptian queens and pharaohs. There are barefoot slaves shouldering goods for their mistresses and masters, driving carriages and pushing carts laden with sacks and boxes. One day they pass a cathedral and, just beyond, see a group of slaves being herded into a wagon. The men, women and children are scarred and mutilated. Missing ears, missing fingers, missing eyes. All of them in tattered clothes, two of the children white. ‘What happened to them?’ Quill asks, but Caroline is at a loss to explain to a boy whose own life has been purchased. ‘It is the way it is,’ she says. ‘I have learned that no amount of wishing for life to be another way will make a feather of dif ference.’ She might have told him that, even if you once had a title, a grand house on the rue Saint-Honoré in Paris with carriages and many servants, and an estate with ten thousand vines, when the houses are gone, the fields and the servants, and all the money, then the laws that have defined your world, that might offer you restitution or protection, also disappear . There is no point in outrage or petitions. No point in fighting at all. ‘This is somethi ng we share, Quill,’ she says. ‘We both know how easily everything is lost—which makes each day worthy of appreciation.’
Returning to the ship, Caroline moves into a large cabin below the poop deck where the senior Jesuit had resided. The movement of the ship is easier here, and from the portholes she can while away time watching the wake of the ship and all the wide sea. It gives her a new appreciation of the distance she is placing between herself and the past. Nearing the port of Buenos Ayres the ship is beset by thousands of black beetles that cling to the rigging and rise in clouds. When the ship is at last at anchor in the harbour , two more of the Jesuits disembark. Tobacco is added to the cargo, another investment Caroline has made. Two Quakers come aboard, a husband and wife who have lived in Argentina for five years. ‘They have waited three months to find a ship,’ says de Hoog. ‘They will come first to Van Diemen’ s Land and then on to Sydney where I understand they have family .’ ‘Perhaps they will pray for us as we round the Cape,’ Caroline says. ‘Especially now we have again added to the number of women aboard,’ says de Hoog, with a brief smile. Caroline of fers him a wry look in return. ‘I have heard men pray in many languages in those waters,’ de Hoog adds. ‘Even the most ardent of non-believers.’ ‘And women?’ ‘If they were all as fearless as you, Mrs Douglas, perhaps there would be no need of prayer .’ Caroline knows she must endure at least one meal with the new passengers. They are dressed in their muted grey Quaker garb and speak of the school they established in the city. Later in the evening, once brandy has been offered by de Hoog, but refused by his new guests as they had also refused the wine, the Quakers talk of an expedition on which they witnessed the wild Indians being shot en masse.
‘The children, some just a year or two old, were shackled and taken for slaves,’ says the husband. ‘It is an old war and many of the Indians are tamed now . By nature they are a gentle people in my observation.’ ‘The coffee farmers use slaves, too, but they are all blacks from the African coast,’ says the wife. ‘In the morning, we could hear them across the valley , singing their hymns. I do not think I will ever for get it.’ ‘If one can blind oneself to the suffering and brutality ,’ says the husband, ‘it is an idyllic way for some to live. It has made many families immensely rich.’ I have invested in slavery, Caroline reflects. The coffee in the hold, the tobacco, the sugar . Perhaps even the muslin of my dress. ‘Nothing is achieved without sacrifice,’ she hears Tante Henriette say. ‘Sometimes the sacrifice is other people.’ Near the Falkland Islands large seabirds attack the rigging, hungry for the leather. Many are shot and some are taken to be cooked. Flocks of turkey buzzards pass over the ship, too. More than one hundred and fifty-six, according to Quill’s count. Several are brought down. They have an oily meat that Caroline finds delicious. Through a hailstorm, Caroline glimpses the impenetrable black cliffs of Patagonia, the bare land rising up and away into towering embankments of thunderous clouds. Hundreds of seals and thousands of penguin s play in the ship’s wake. The sea becomes increasingly turbulent, the barometer dropping along with the temperature. In Tierra del Fuego she sees snow-capped mountains. Condors soar and she marvels at the spread of their wings, their floating grace. One of these is also brought down with a shot from one of the officers, but it is unable to be retrieved. Whales that might swamp the deck pass nearby, the noise of their breath searing the air , their spumes of water rising into the sky . She is glad of her furs again as she grips the railing, her body moving with the ship’s heavy dance. She lets it come, lets the blast of ice burn her eyelids, pushes her face into the fury of it. The cold se eps through her woollen stockings into her legs, into her fingers, making her cheeks sting and her teeth ache. The mountains are shrouded by fog and rain. ‘Best to get below , Mrs Douglas,’ de Hoog says. Quill is at her side, his eyes alive, though he says nothing. She retreats with him to her cabin, hail rattling on the deck above.
The weather becomes violent, the waves terrifying. Icebergs are sighted, green and gigantic, that might split a ship in two. Caroline and Quill curl in blankets in her cot, holding one another as the Alliance is assailed by wounding seas and rampaging winds. Fear serves no useful purpose, Caroline tells herself. No useful purpose. ‘You do not need to be scared,’ Quill tells her . ‘She is a good ship.’ Day after day it continues. Caroline recounts for Quill the story of Odysseus and his long voyage home after the Trojan War. When there is light, she tries to read to him from the illustrated edition of The Arabian Nights she has k ept from childhood. At last they are beyond the Cape, beyond the Straits of Magellan, through the East and West Furies. The sailors take respite. Beards are shaved, uniforms are restored. Courage is a form of excitement, Caroline thinks, emerging from her cabin to billowing spray. Despite the weeks of tempest, still the Alliance holds them. Or is it the sea that holds them? Quill is at his favourite pursuit; he has climbed to the fore upper topsail set. ‘I’ll flay him when he comes down,’ says the captain, looking up. ‘You will not,’ says Caroline. ‘And why would that be, Mrs Douglas?’ he asks. ‘Because, while he may be counted as a member of this crew, until I take leave of your ship any flaying falls to me.’ She surveys her black gloved fingers, as if imagining a whip resting across them. ‘There will be other days,’ says the captain. ‘Of boys climbing the rigging, I am sure,’ Caroline r eplies. ‘For the flaying of them, too, I assume.’ ‘He’s a good lad,’ the captain says. ‘He is. Do you know why he is called Quill?’ she asks. He shrugs. ‘The only name I was given.’ ‘Was it a game of cards? A wager?’ ‘No business of yours,’ the captain says. ‘Perhaps he is writing his own life,’ she says. ‘Rain coming,’ he r eplies, as if she had not noticed the squall approaching. She looks up and sees Quill descending the mast with the ease of a cat. She knows she will miss this uncommon life of sea and sky when it is at an
end.
They make r epairs and r eprovision in the port town of Valparaíso before heading west into the Pacific Ocean. The trade winds are a relief after the low grey skies and irascibl e seas of South America. Still, it is a long passage, punctuated by turtle soup and Quill’s increasing facility for reading and writing. Otaheite is but a week away when the Quaker wife knocks on Caroline’ s cabin door . ‘Will you come?’ she asks. ‘My husband has taken ill.’ For days the man has been afflicted with headaches and nausea. Now he is becoming more agitated and will take no fluids. The ship’s surgeon diagnoses malaria, acquired in the jungles of South America, but he does not have the fever dreams Caroline knows are common to that disease. The surgeon wishes to bleed the man, but the wife won’t allow it. She says to Caroline that it will only weaken him, and the rum he is offered by the surgeon is merely poison. ‘Can you help?’ she asks. ‘I had a sense that you would know what to do.’ Caroline does not wish to draw attention to her stock of medicines, nor her knowledge, the thing she has been good at, the future her father had envisioned for her. But when she finds the puncture wound on the man’s leg healed over , red and hardened, she knows she cannot abandon the woman. ‘He was bitten?’ she asks. ‘A dog, in Valparaíso,’ says the wife. ‘I treated it with a powder . You do not think ... ?’ ‘Rabies,’ says Caroline, nodding. ‘Or hydrophobia, as some call it. I am so sorry .’ The woman retreats into an anguished silence. The man is strapped down. Caroline descends below to fetch the ointment of Datura metel and Piper nigrum from India which she had packed in one of her trunks. She rubs it into the wound and drops laudanum tincture into the man’s mouth.
He has moments of lucidity followed by increasing periods of violence. It is a death of ferocity and desperation. The captain and first mate bring a sailcloth to wrap his body. On deck it rests on a pallet set across barrels. A sunrise of crimson and saffron spears a sombre mass of tropical cloud. Prayers are spoken and a hymn sung before the body is slid from the pallet into the sea. The following morning the black volcanic peaks of Otaheite loom on the horizon. Crossing the reef and entering a small harbour , the breeze carries an exotic fragrance. The ship is quickly surrounded by canoes. Native peoples, laughing and calling, urge them to inspect a selection of shells and carved items. Captain de Hoog will not let them aboard, telling Caroline they would take anything that caught their eye. The last of the Jesuits are rowed ashore in a longboat. Caroline and Quill are also ferried to the brilliant white-sand beach. Caroline had invited the Quaker widow to join them but she had declined with a brief shake of her head. Caroline and Quill delight in milk of the cocoa-nut, a baked fish wrapped in palm leaves and the delicious fruit of the pine-apple. The smiling faces of the local people enchant her. She observes the churches and warehouses, the white colonial houses of French and English design amidst the luxuriant vegetation of this rustic and beautiful place. Children surroun d Quill as if his arrival has been anticipated and invite him to join them. At first he is reluctant to engage, but Caroline encourages him. ‘I will be very comfortable here in the shade. Now , go!’ Soon he is running on the sand as the children throw a ball, leaping and falling in a skirmish of elbows and knees. When he stands again, the ball in his hand, she sees him laugh for the first time. Christmas comes and goes before the Alliance is readied for d eparture. Caroline gives Quill a pink conch shell sold to her by one of the natives. She shows him how to put it to his ear so he can hear the sea. ‘I have given you nothing,’ he says. ‘You have helped me to avoid invitations to join the ladies of the London Missionary Society for tea, and k ept me company through some
very hot and dull church services,’ says Caroline. ‘More importantly , you have given me your smile every day . Those are gifts of great value.’ Later that evening, after they have eaten in the guesthouse where they are residing for the sojourn, he presents her with a jar of frangipani which scents her bedroom. The Quaker ’s death, and his wife’s mourning as they sail on, turn Caroline’ s thoughts to her father’s illness. The long disappearances when his brain tormented him, and the times when he returned. How he had come to her, after the deed on the Battersea Bridge, and she had taken the bloodied knife from him and thrown it in the Thames, knowing nothing of what had occurred just moments before. When the details were revealed in various newspapers, and the family where she worked as a governess let her go, she understood. She was, in fact, relieved. She began using her mother’s maiden name and took another job teaching twin girls. Fatigue envelop ed her in the months that followed. Some days she had wanted to sle ep and sle ep and never wake up. Other days she had walked to Millbank Prison simply to stand in the shadow of its walls, knowing that within was a man she loved, a ghost, a remnant of her father . Do your dreams live on? she wonders. If you lay them down, if you discard them, can they jump into the pocket of someone else? Do they drift from you at death to find some other mind or heart?
Van Diemen’s Land appears out of the sea mist, with soaring cliffs and a shore of tumbled pewter boulders. Waves crash against the coastline, plumes of water shooting high into the air. Captain de Hoog tells Caroline that if the sou’wester continues to blow , the journey’ s end is within grasp. Caroline can smell p eppermint, earth, forest. The quietude of her cabin, and this creakin g, steadfast vessel that has delivered her all this way, must soon be left behind. She braces herself for the world ashore. Observing the dense forest cloaking the hills and the mountains, she considers how it had been here all this time while, elsewhere, empires had risen and fallen. Will it be very primitive? How much could have been achieved in some thirty years by convict s and settlers and soldiers? And what of the native peoples? Were there native peoples? It seemed that there were people everywhere she had travelled. Her thoughts turn to Quill. Mostly the crew seemed to treat him well. He ran about the ship as if he was born to it, but the sea was hungry and impetuous. How easily such a small person might be washed overboard, crushed in broken rigging, fall ill from a wound or be taken with a fever . ‘If you did not act with such recklessness,’ she says. ‘A little less climbing ...’ ‘It’s the only place I can be alone,’ he says. ‘Exc ept when I’m with you.’ She understands . She, too, is weary of being observed whenever she leaves her cabin, of the impossibility of solitude amidst crew and passengers. But what of the boy beyond here? Maybe he would come under the gaze of some brute who would misuse him, or be shipwrecked in a violent storm. Perhaps he would abscond in a harbour where the trees made good climbing, the fruit was plentiful and the street life appealing, becoming a pickpocket or a beggar . Had his father done the boy a favour in sending him to sea? She has seen children hurrying to the factories of London before dawn with their
bruises, burns and wounds, with arms and legs too thin, too small, for the work expected of them. Perhaps Quill has been saved from such a fate. In her father’s apothecary , children and adults were carried in with broken spines or crushed limbs. He never charged a fee when it was a child in need, or it was apparent that a person could not pay, but he charged a little more for those who sent a manservant or a lady’ s maid for a remedy . Her father had translated books from French into English, one about the beliefs of the Hindoo. He wrote pamphlets on the benefits of diet, the care of the body and the care of the spirit. ‘The great sadness is that the people who need these the most do not read,’ he said one day, as they unpacked the latest leaflets from the printer’s boxes and arranged them on a shelf in the shop. ‘Cannot read.’ ‘Will it always be so?’ Caroline asked. ‘Will there be a balancing of good and bad, right and wrong, a future far beyond the comprehension of our lifetimes?’ he asked. ‘An act of human kindness takes but a moment in any time,’ said Caroline. ‘Or are you suggesting there is a dif ferent way to see the world?’ ‘I am always asking this of myself, dear daughter . To be curious is to be truly alive.’ Sometimes recipients of her father’s generosity returned to show him a healing scar, a rash disappeared, a broken bone mended. They offered him a ginger kitten for his girls, a pale pink seashell said to have come from a relative who had sailed with the East India Company . They knitted him socks. One old man, whose symptoms had been eased with a remedy of Filipendula , presented a tiny drawing in ink. It d epicted Caroline at work measuring herbs. The artist had made the world in the shop stand still. ‘ Ah, vous êtes vraiment un maîtr e ,’ Father said. ‘A master.’ When the man d eparted, Caroline said to her father, ‘I want to believe there is grace for the good. Or perhaps I mean grace for the poor .’ ‘But is it not the wealthy who are blessed by God?’ He was teasing her now. ‘I think it would be harder to be good if one is poor .’ ‘Unfortunately ,’ her father said, ‘I have witnessed almost the opposite. Here in London and beyond, it seems that poverty itself is a crime, if one believes the priests. Yet consider the man who was just here; if circumstances had been kinder he might have become a great artist. He has
not only captured your posture, your expression, the shop itself but, most vitally, he has conveyed something of your nature.’ Caroline nodded . In the picture she looked absorbed in her work, and quietly amused. ‘Maybe how we see the world makes the world we see,’ her father said. ‘It feels as if there is some sort of order ,’ said Caroline. ‘Where?’ he asked. She might have said in the very rhythms of her body through each month, but instead she said, ‘In the seasons. In the moon cycles. Apples in autumn and blossom in spring.’ This was how they spent the quiet moments in the shop. He had tutored Caroline and Augusta in French and history, literature and Latin, chemistry , biology and a little astronomy , while their mother had tutored them in English, mathematics and geography. It was only after their arrival in London that any thought had been given to the two girls attending a day school. ‘You feel an energy that imbues weather and cycle, the earth and all that grows upon it?’ her father enquired, as he held aloft a vial of gentian ste eped in wine and decanted it into a stoppered vessel. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Y es, I think so.’ ‘Do you think a force so grand, so ancient and eternal, has an interest in every living thing? In the small notions we might call sin? Any interest in our daily lives at all?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Caroline said. ‘Your mother would say yes, of course, for faith is her way and I have great regard for the peace it brings her. But I am of Spinoza’ s view that we are more suited to the laws of nature than to be governed by a God of commands and decrees.’ ‘How could that work, Father?’ He laughed. ‘How indeed! But let me try ... The God of which the churches speak, at least since the fifth century , when all other Christian faiths were destroyed and many other ancient faiths as well, has been a God of punishment and reward, a God like a king. But Spinoza saw a divine law at work. How could such a force, an energy that made this bountiful world, possibly care for the day of the week we have ascribed to worship, or the name we have given it? The covering of your head or the way you clothe your body? If you are born a man or a woman? Such an entity is
unconcerned with the particula rity of us. Divine laws cannot be broken, unlike the laws that govern notions of sin and goodness.’ ‘So there will be no Day of Judgement?’ she asked. He smiled and handed her the final bottle for labelling. ‘The Quran says the greatest battle a man ever wages is the conquest of himself. So how will you live, dear daughter? Or—and I offer you this at the start of your long life, in the hope that when it comes you will be ready —what will be in your heart when you die?’ ‘Ah, Papa, how I have pondered that,’ she sighs. She lies down upon the cot and cannot say if her tears are born of regret or longing, or fear of the things that might have grown in his heart while imprisoned. Later, she restores the cabin to anonymi ty. No more clothes drying or drawings pegged to a string. No tea, herbs and spices vying with playing cards and books for space on the shelves. All that has accompanied her on the voyage is stowed in pr eparation for a new life, exc ept for a brass compass in a case of blue Morocco leather. A start to negotiations, or perhaps a sweetener at the end. ‘Captain de Hoog,’ she says, ‘what price would you want for the boy?’ ‘Do you own me now?’ Quill asks when she tells him that she has freed him from his debt to Captain de Hoog. They are seated at the small table in her emptied cabin, the table where they had sat so often together , where he had pursued his studies and learned to play chess. ‘No, Quill,’ she says. ‘I do not. You are a free person. You belong to yourself, now and always.’ She wants to explain how she abhors the idea of owning him, she wants to talk of slavery and emancipat ion, but it would only lead to her talking of her father and mother , of her father ’s pamphlets and her mother ’s meetings. ‘You can stay here aboard the Alliance and continue your voyages with Captain de Hoog, but you will no longer belong to him. You will receive wages like the other men.’ What a negotiati on it had been—worse than with any glass merchant for the apothecary . ‘Or perhaps,’ Caroline continu es tentatively , ‘you would like to stay with me, here in Van Diemen’ s Land.’ Quill stares at her , his eyes wide. ‘Stay with you? As your servant?’
‘You would not be my servant, Quill. We would live togethe r, and I would care for you, until you are grown and can make other choices. But you must think about it. There is time while the ship is in harbour to make up your mind.’ ‘But what will I do?’ he asks. ‘Be a boy , I guess.’ In the late morning, they enter Storm Bay, which is well named, for despite it being summer there is a persistent horizontal rain, the seas broken, the air chilled. Between rain squalls Caroline glimpses doleful forested hills. She imagines crocuses lifting their heads in London, the apricot, pear and apple trees that will soon be in bloom. Jonquils awakening with the early daffodils, lilies and irises, their new leaves pushing up from the earth, roses soon beginning to bud. The seasons are turned upside down, and with them the fruiting or flowering of all that is familiar to her . Then the storm passes as if a celestial composer has begun a second act. The clouds disappear revealing a bonny day . Dolphins race the ship. The Quaker widow comes to stand at the railing beside her. She is pale and thin. Caroline thinks to take her hand but instead, to her surprise, the other woman takes hers. ‘God placed us on this ship,’ the woman says. ‘My husband’ s death would have been far worse without you.’ ‘I was powerless to save him,’ says Caroline. ‘You eased his way, which is all we can ever hope for I think.’ She releases Carolin e’s hand. ‘My brother lives here. He and his wife are building a community of Quakers. I will stay with them until the ship d eparts. I will be sure to tell them of your kindness. If you need anything, I know my brother will be willing to assist you.’ ‘Thank you,’ says Caroline. ‘It will not be easy to establish yourself here without family. But I suppose there are many doing the same.’ ‘Yes,’ says Caroline, unsure how to respond. ‘And you must go on to Sydney?’ ‘I have a daughter there. It is eight years since I have seen her, and she has three children now .’ ‘I am pleased for you, and sad that she has lost her father .’
‘It will be hard to arrive with such news. But children have a way of healing us.’ A mountain comes into view, more a giant shoulder than a peak—not like the soaring sentinels she had seen in Rio or the volcanos of Otaheite. They pass a lighthouse on a small flat island of rock. Upriver , a broad harbour offers sanctuary to a flotilla of vessels large and small, some underway , others anchored at rest. Buildings and roads are evident along the foreshore and into the lower foothills of the mountain. A British flag is flying. For a place of penury , it is dramatically beautiful. Perhaps he is her son. But surely she is too young to have a child that age? There is speculation on every passenger arriving. Fame travels on a name, infamy, too. ‘He is her ward,’ the clerk tells a friend that night in a tavern at Sullivan’ s Cove. His work was to ke ep the ledger for the colonial government, recording the arrival of every ship in a neat, unembellished hand. In his previous life he was a banker found guilty of forging a bill of sale. He had a ticket of leave now, and was the first official encountered by those who arrived in the colony . The young widow had a most pleasant face and spoke with a clear voice, though she looked properly sombre in black from head to foot. He remembered their names. A Mistress Caroline Douglas and a Master Quill Douglas from New York.
The shingle outside says: Room to rent . It is one of several stone cottages above the foreshore, this one the furthest from the odour of whales being flensed and close to the military barracks. There is a large ship’s bell in the front yard. ‘This one?’ asks Quill. ‘Shall we knock on the door and see?’ Caroline r eplies. The bedrooms they are shown are clean and pleasantly appointed. Mrs Roper, the landlady , invites them to descend the stairs to the sitting room, where a fire burns. The window looks out towards the harbour which is bristling in a late afternoon breeze. They also have a view of the warehouse where Caroline and Quill have overseen the storage of her trunks until they find somewhere permanent to live. Mrs Roper is a small woman, her hair white beneath her cap, her whole complexion giving the look of someone in need of sunshine, or comfort. Yet her blue eyes twinkle. She serves them rabbit stew accompani ed by warm bread and butter. This is followed by two generous portions of pound cake with custard and strawberries. She says to Quill, ‘You’re a lad who’s had a big adventure.’ Quill retreats into the bowl before him. Mrs Roper takes a cloth from her shoulder and wipes away a few crumbs left by the bread board. ‘Just the two of you, then?’ ‘I am recently widowed,’ said Caroline. ‘Quill is my ward, so here we are.’ Mrs Roper nods, as if this is an adequate answer . When Quill is gone up to bed, Caroline moves to a chair near the fir eplace and warms her hands. The world is still swaying, her body still pr eparing to brace for the next wave, but it does not come and she breathes and feels her feet upon a steady floor. Mrs Roper returns with a hand-drawn map. She
shows Caroline the streets of Hobart, pointing out key landmarks and the shops she might be needing. ‘We are looking for a cottage of some sort,’ Caroline says. ‘Somewhere a little distant from the town, but not too far—near the sea perhaps, with enough land for a garden.’ ‘Well,’ says Mrs Roper, indicating a road leading out of the township, ‘it might be worth looking over the hill in New Town. People there are raising she ep and such. There’s a few vineyards and orchards out that way, too. Could be a cottage for renting.’ ‘There are vineyards?’ Caroline asks. ‘Yes. There was a place that produced quite a famous wine. Must be ten years ago now .’ ‘What happened?’ ‘It got caught up in a legal matter, as I heard it. A lot of work, of course, something like that.’ Caroline and Quill walk out along the main road leading north. Wagons and horses, single riders, carriages and gigs pass by. As soon as they can, they find a path leading away from the road until they are skirting the fringe of the forest beneath the mountain’ s slopes, above cleared fields where she ep and cows graze, the stumps of immense trees evident. Homes are scattered across the valley . They walk until they come upon a rundown cottage. The place looks uninhabited. To one side of the dwelling is a eucalyptus, so enormous it might take six or eight people to surround it with their arms outstretched. Its trunk is sienna and umber, palest grey and linen. Long lengths of cinnamon- coloured bark are hanging between its limbs and piled at its feet. ‘It is a giant,’ says Caroline, walking towards it and laying her hand upon its trunk. ‘A king,’ says Quill. ‘Or a queen of the ancient world,’ says Caroline. At the front of the cottage there is a young oak tree. A tree that might grow wide and green, providing a place to lay a blanket for a picnic or a branch to hold a swing for a child when its boughs grow strong. She takes in a high stone wall behind the cottage—a kitchen garden, she assumes. There is also a drystone wall surrounding an overgrown field set away from the cottage. Then she realises that she is looking at grapevines
tangled with wild grasses. She notices, beyond the eucalyptus , a wooden bridge leading to a stone barn, where a plume of smoke es capes the chimney . A house of grand proportions has been built further down the creek, where the land flattens out before a wide bay on the shores of the river. A row of young pine trees flanks the road leading to the large house, and she can see workers in the gardens and the nearby fields. A man emerges from the barn and sees them. He raises his hand in a friendly gesture and walks towards them. As he comes near, Caroline sees that he is a black man dressed in a long leather apron. He takes off his cap. Caroline can see his hair is close-cropped and greying, the lines on his face sunk as de ep as furrows in soil after ploughing. His back is a little stooped, but he is still a man of powerful size. Perhaps he is a convict. His shirt, trousers and boots are all ingrained with soot. ‘Good morning,’ he says, bowing to Caroline and Quill. ‘I am Cornelius, the blacksmith. I live there.’ He indicates the barn. ‘Can I help you, mistress?’ The man’ s accent is similar to those of the black sailors on the Alliance . ‘Hello, Cornelius,’ she says. ‘I am Mrs Douglas and this is my ward, Quill. We were just walking the path above and saw the cottage. Does no one live in it?’ ‘It hasn’t been occupied in some time, Mrs Douglas. It is used to house feed for livestock and such.’ ‘We are newly arrived and are seeking a place to live. I have heard there may be places to rent here in the valley .’ ‘You should speak with Captain Swanston, who owns all this land. He lives in the big house down there. He has been thinking for some time of selling the cottage, and the vineyard there with it.’ Cornelius indicates the vines behind the stone wall. ‘Do you know what sort of wine was made there?’ Caroline asks. ‘Champagne and red wine,’ the blacksmith r eplies. Champagne? Caroline is incredulous. Surely not. She could tell Cornelius that her father’s family provided champagne to Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI. That were it not for the Re volution, her father might be making wine still. But she does not.
That evening after their meal, and with Quill in bed, Caroline invites Mrs Roper to sit and presents the landlady with a bottle of port she has acquired that day. Once drinks are poured and they are settled by the fire, Caroline asks Mrs Roper about the lar ge house. ‘Ah, that will be the Swanstons’ . They call it New Town Park. I believe it is very fancy. They say the wife comes from a British mercha nt family in India. Quite the beauty , though I have seen her only from a distance.’ ‘And her husband?’ ‘Well, Captain Swanston is the director of the Derwent Bank, one of the two big banks in town. A finger in every pie, they say. Nothing he doesn’t know that’s worth knowing. Not very happy with the current Governor by all accounts. He has a clever wife who has all sorts of notions that do upset people.’ ‘You mean Mrs Swanston?’ ‘Oh, likely she is very clever, too, but I was talking about the Governor ’s wife.’ ‘And you approve of her?’ ‘Not my business to approve or disapprove. The men of this town seem to grumble about her a lot, but I think a lady willing to brave the wilds of this island is worthy of a little admiration ...’ She pauses. ‘Captain Swanston’ s wife might be very glad to meet a person of your standing, Mrs Douglas.’ ‘Are they in need of a governess, by any chance?’ Caroline asks. ‘Well, they have eight children in all, I think, but only a few are left at home now. The older boys are gone, and the daughters are both married to men here. ‘I never heard a bad word about him as a master, Captain Swanston,’ she continues. ‘Convicts used to be assigned to the likes of him. Now you’ll see them making roads and bridges. Chained, poor devils. Breaking rock and such. Government work. Every day more of them arriving and put to work with not a thought to how such work can break a man down. And a woman, too, for they get little better at the women’ s prison—the female factory they call it, for that’s what it is. A grim, cold factory. Now the murderers and rapists who’ve done their time on Norfolk Island are being sent here.’ Mrs Roper shakes her head. Norfolk Island. It feels dangerous to hear the words spoken aloud. Dangerous to speak them. Caroline refills their glasses while Mrs Roper
settles another log onto the fire. ‘You’d not know it was summer these past weeks,’ she says. ‘This rain and such a chill wind today. Last week we had snow on the mountain, and at Christmas, would you believe. You never know which way the weather is going to turn. It takes some getting accustomed to.’ ‘May I ask why you are here, Mrs Roper?’ Caroline asks. ‘Oh, Mrs Douglas, we don’ t talk of that kind of thing in this town.’ ‘I do apologise,’ says Caroline. ‘I did not mean to give of fence ...’ ‘And no offence taken. Everyone is doing their best to forget exactly what brought them here, and what stops them going home, as you’ll soon discover . Once their sentence is done the job is to make something of themselves. It’s what sets me in my place and you there in yours. You’ll be like honey to the ants in this town, Mrs Douglas, when word gets about.’ ‘Word?’ asks Caroline. ‘Plenty will already be asking who you are. There’ll be those who saw you come off the ship and took your luggage. People wanting to know why you are here and what you intend to do. And when you intend to pack away those widow’ s weeds and find yourself a new husband. There’s a shortage of eligible women and not many who are young and pretty like you.’ ‘My husband is not dead a year, Mrs Roper,’ Caroline says, her eyes downcast. ‘I am only giving you fair warning, lass. But perhaps I’ll leave you now to have a little quiet.’ ‘Mrs Roper,’ says Caroline, ‘you have made us most welcome and comfortable. Thank you so much. I do appreciate it.’ ‘You and the boy are welcome to stay with me as long as you need, Mrs Douglas. No point rushing into anything. Take some time to get a sense of the place.’ She moves to the door . ‘Can I bring you another pot of tea?’ ‘Thank you, Mrs Roper,’ says Caroline. ‘That would be perfect. It is quite strange to be somewhere that is not rocking.’ Mrs Roper nods. ‘Well I remember it,’ she says. ‘’Tis a mighty long way you’ve come, and no doubt a relief to find yourselves on land again.’ ‘It is all a little unreal,’ says Caroline. ‘And it may be for a while yet,’ says Mrs Roper. Then, almost as an afterthought, she says quietly, ‘I stole a horse, Mrs Douglas. I was just a slip of a girl, barely fourteen. It was outside Manchester . Truth be known, I’m still a little proud of it. Those few hours were the greatest night of my life.’
‘Was there some ur gent matter that required a horse?’ Caroline asks. Mrs Roper gives her a keen look and says, ‘There was, not that the judge ever asked me. Running away from a man, of course.’ Caroline blushes and hopes the lamplight has disguised it. Perhaps she was also running away from a man, or towards him. And having stolen so much more than Mrs Roper .
‘I said no more,’ her father said. Caroline overheard the conversation while weighing camomile flowers. They were to be ste eped for sle eping draughts. For a stronger remedy there were red poppies for opium tincture that came, her father had told her, from a place where women are veiled and, if you steal, they will cut off your hand. Caroline observe d the two bolts of cloth Tante Henriette had laid in front of her father. ‘ C’est magnifiqu e, non? ’ her aunt said, running her hand across the fabric. One was cream with a pattern of silver that glowed and shimmered; the other was a pale green silk. ‘ Bien sûr ,’ her father said. ‘But I cannot.’ ‘It is a lovely shop you have, petit frère ,’ Tante Henriette said. ‘So many good clients who trust you. I have seen how they speak with you. You sense the nature of illness. It is your skill. To listen. To care for these people who come to you. This is what makes you a good chemist. Even doctors seek your counsel. You have done very well for an émigré . And what is my skill?’ There was a pause. ‘Henriette ...’ Jacques-Louis began. ‘To watch. To see. To find opportunities in what I see. Opportu nities to reward us both. Are we not reclaiming our dreams?’ ‘You could make other choices ...’ ‘Marry an Englishman? It would be the greatest of fence.’ ‘I am not suggesting that.’ ‘Some Frenchman, then? Some sorry creature who es caped the Re volution, who survived the delusions of Bonaparte? His lands gone, no doubt his money, too. What could he offer me? His wardrobe of outmoded fashion? Or perhaps the dream of a plantation in South America where he might grow rich again. Some sticky place where I will spend my days fanning away flies and making conversation with savages.’
‘I think you’d quite enjoy conversing with savages,’ Jacques-Louis said, and Caroline smiled. ‘You do know your daughter is listening to us,’ said Tante Henriette. Her father turned towards Caroline, seated on the stool across the shop. ‘ C’est vrai , Caroline?’ he asked. ‘ Oui , Papa,’ she r eplied, without looking up from her work. ‘And what do you make of it?’ her father asked. ‘The fabric is very beautiful and I can see the wife of Doctor Arnold thinking the cream and silver perfect for her renovations. The green will make several perfect gowns for the coming season. Perhaps one for Tante Henriette’ s ladies?’ The bolts of fabric were included in their inventory . When Doctor Arnold came to the apothecary for the cocaine powder he r eplenished each month, it was Caroline who showed him the fabric, just arrived from Paris, she said. Perhaps Mrs Arnold might like it, and if not, there were other ladies ... A measure of green silk was quickly purchased, too. When Tante Henriette heard of this, and the price achieved, she was amused. ‘You will go a long way in this world, dear niece,’ she said. ‘I am watching you.’ As a child Caroline had wanted to go every day to the apotheca ry to weigh the lemon drops and humbugs and licorice crunch—her favourite. She liked to visit the leeches k ept at the rear of the store in a large jar and given out only to the servants of doctors. The leeches were fed on rats her father purchased from street boys who presented them to him in boxes, or sometimes from their pockets. ‘One thing feeds upon another , Caroline,’ her father said. ‘If you look, you will see it everywhere.’ Jacques-Louis had never intended to become an apothecary . He had grown up in a chateau amidst acres of vineyards. When he tended the vine that grew their table grapes, he spoke with a special af fection. ‘We cannot know how it has arrived here in England, and yet here it is. This vine is a descendant of other peoples and other times. We grow where we can, dear Caroline, just as plants do.’
Caroline yawns discreetly behind her black-gloved hand as she awaits the arrival of Captain Swanston. She has sl ept fitfully this past week, unable to stop her mind from dwelling on all that has happened, and all that might yet happen. Dawn arrives quickly at this latitude, and then she finds she cannot return to sle ep but must rise and walk. Since disembarking the ship, she has discovered Hobart to be a colourful, bustling town with occupants of every provenance, yet the architecture and bureaucracy is all England. There are formal sandstone houses and government buildings as well as small cottages of turf, wattle and daub, some with picket fences. There are churches and chapels of various denominations, shops, guesthouses, hotels and all manner of drinking establishments from which much singing emanates. There is a gaol, a hospital, a courthouse, a barracks and a bond store. Hunter Island sits to the far side of the harbour with its stone warehouses of government supplies k ept under guard. Government House is a rather shambling assortment of low buildings in the centre of the town. Swanston’ s clerk assures Caroline that he can be of assistance, if she would care to explain her business. He is a narrow man, hardly older than her, with wet, pale eyes and an overbite. Perhaps you are descended from a tasteless fish, she thinks. She rises and smooths her gown. ‘If Captain Swanston is in capable of ke eping the appointments made for him, then perhaps I will be better served by the Van Diemen’ s Bank.’ The clerk insists she resume her seat. He himself will go in search of the captain. When he arrives, Captain Swanston has the smell of horse about him. He is well built, sharp-eyed and fair-haired, with a high forehead and a long aquiline nose—a far cry from the aged, round-bellied, bespectacled creature she had expected. There is something of the seasoned hero in his
comportment. She assumes he rides a white horse, and is amused to discover later that he does. ‘My sincere apologies, Mrs Douglas,’ he says, ushering her into his office. ‘I had an inspection at ... well, I do apologise for ke eping you waiting.’ She hears Tante Henriette saying, ‘You can never know a man until you see him with other men. That is the true measure. Who does he become? What a woman hopes for is a statesman, but too often we are persuaded by a visionary, or charmed by a poet or seduced by a goat. I myself prefer the company of women, and in time you may find this is true for you, too.’ Caroline does not see a poet. Captain Swanston is a man of energy and purpose. Whether he is a man of vision or a goat is yet to be known. What does he see when he looks at her? she wonders. Summoning Tante Henriette, she lifts her chin, settles easily into the chair and assumes a relaxed air. She has nothing to prove. Quite the opposite. It is Captain Swanston who must prove his worth. ‘You are here with family?’ he asks. His manner is a little brusque. ‘I am not, Captain Swanston. My husband and I had intended to come together , but that ... well, it was not to be.’ Her black silk dress and bonnet, her demeanour as she says these words, makes further explanation unnecessary . ‘I am very sorry to hear that, Mrs Douglas.’ ‘It is a trial with which God has appointed me. But Hope smiles on Effort. My husband always said that. I have heard from several sources that you are a man of merit. Someone with whom I might entrust my af fairs.’ Caroline can see him assessing the quality of her gown. The rings on her fingers now she has removed her lace gloves. The pearl brooch at her neck. She lays two documents before him: a marriage certificate and a death certificate. Swanston adopts the sober air of a banker, accustomed to taking charge of other people’ s money much like an undertaker assumes charge of the deceased. She must be wise. Her investment in the cargo of the Alliance has proved as rewarding as Captain de Hoog had promised; coffee, tobacco, sugar, salt and rum were exactly what this colony needed. But she knows that money is easily lost. Lost in dreams and speculation, lost in madness, and in re volutions.
‘Captain Swanston,’ she says, ‘I am sure you are a confessor to many people, when you take their money into your hands. I hope that I do not need to explain to you the precariousness of my situation. I am a widow alone in this strange place. We do not know one another , and I understand that for a woman to have control of her financial affairs is highly unusual. As such, I wish any arrangemen t to be a matter of complete confidentiality . If I were to place this trust in you, I would be entirely reliant on your discretion. But I believe I can make it worth your while.’ She places before him a bank cheque from London. If he is startled at the document, and the sum, he does his best to disguise it. Still, she notices a glint appear in his eyes. He presses his palms onto his desk. Then, as if he has come to an agreement with himself, he nods and says, ‘I assure you that nothing of your affairs will leave these walls, Mrs Douglas. I am not simply managing director here; I am also a member of the Legislative Council. My own company trades in goods in Canton, Madras, Calcutta, Manila, Mauritius and the Netherlands Indies. I have investors abroad and also here who rely on me to safeguard their interests. I will personally see to your d eposit and you may rely on my assistance for any future needs.’ He adds, ‘We are also a mortgage bank, and thus are able to offer capital should you require it; land is not cheap in this colony .’ ‘Thank you, Captain Swanston,’ she r eplies. ‘However ,’ he continues, ‘I must warn you that you will be the subject of conversation, Mrs Douglas. This is a place sorely d eprived of young women of your standing.’ ‘So I have heard, Captain Swanston, but I am only recently a widow and I loved my husband dearly ,’ she r eplies. He nods, and she sees his surprise at her fierceness. ‘A more pressing concern,’ Caroline goes on, ‘is a home. I seek somewhere with a view of the river. I do not want anything that might draw attention to me. A simple cottage will suffice. Somewhere in proximity to the town with sufficient acreage for a garden and possibly further cultivation. If you can assist me to find such a property—again, discreetly ...’ ‘Let me give your situation some thought, Mrs Douglas,’ he says. He bows when he takes her hand in farewell. Only then does it occur to her that Captain Swanston is grateful for her money. This unsettles her a little, and then it pleases her .
The following day, he is awaiting her arrival. Again he ushers her into his office, and tells her of a cottage on his own land that is part of the estate he purchased in New Town ten years ago. He has been meaning to sell it, along with seven acres. It is just over the hill from the harbour and has been unoccupied for some years, used for storage. It is in need of new shingles, a whitewash and some other maintenance, but all that can be easily accomplished if the house is of interest to her . ‘I will look at this property you suggest, Captain Swanston. And perhaps you know of others that may be suitable?’ ‘Of course, Mrs Douglas.’ His voice is clipped, as if he has practised it as a necessity of his position. She suspects it could lean to irritation. His long nose in profile reminds her of a deer, although she is sure he would prefer her to think of him as a stag. ‘I intend to take work as a governess, Captain Swanston,’ she says. ‘I have letters of introduction from my previous employers. I speak French fluently . I know Latin, mathematics and a little science. I am more than capable of pr eparing boys for their continued education back in England.’ ‘Mrs Douglas,’ he says, and Caroline sees a small smile at his lips, ‘you must meet my wife; we have three young sons in need of instruction. May I take you to see her?’ ‘Thank you, Captain Swanston ,’ says Caroline. ‘That is most kind of you. But first let me look at your unpainted cottage with its roof in need of r epair.’ ‘Tomorrow?’ ‘Yes, but please arrange for an employee to accompany me. I would not like to be seen with you and cause idle speculation.’ Unexpectedly , he laughs. ‘I think you are going to do very well in this unlikely place, Mrs Douglas,’ he says.
Swanston’ s clerk is driving the gig. Quill sits beside him wearing a navy cap, white pants and a white shirt under a jacket of green wool, all made for him in the township. He is still thin, despite the food he is consuming morning, noon and night. Caroline watches him turning this way and that as he takes in this new world. What would Quill’s father make of his son now? What would his mother? Quill has never spoken of his mother, and Caroline has not pursued the subject. It is easier this way, she decides. She had asked Captain de Hoog if he knew the exact age of the boy . He did not. Nor did Quill. ‘Ten, or thereabouts,’ de Hoog had said. ‘Then let us say you are ten,’ she had said to Quill on their final day aboard the Alliance . ‘It’s a good age. And you will need a birthday . It makes you official. Is there a month you prefer? Or a date?’ Quill shook his head. Caroline suggested the first day of May. ‘It was my sister Augusta’ s birthday . I’m sure she would be happy to share it with you. May Day. A day of ancient rituals for the return of spring, which seems opportune if you really are sure that you wish to accompany me. It cannot be easily undone, such a decision.’ ‘I am sure,’ said Quill. The gig takes them up over the hill. Caroline turns and surveys the river, sparkling and calm. She can see the warehouses where the whale boats come ashore. Walking from Mrs Roper’s into town one mornin g, they had stopped to observe a leviathan laid out upon the cobblestones and the workers climbing it with pick and rope. The smell had been ferocious. ‘The oil goes all the way to London, where it lights street lanterns all over the city ,’ she had told Quill. The boy had been quiet as they walked away. When he spoke at last, he said, ‘Why does something so big have to die for something as small as a
lamp?’ ‘This road leads north to the town of Launceston,’ the clerk calls back to Caroline in the gig. ‘But we turn of f here.’ The wagon track is taking them towards the slopes of Mount Wellington. The sky is blue with high white clouds dappled and combed. ‘The large stone house over there to the right, beyond the pines, is Captain Swanston’ s,’ says the clerk, indicating New Town Park across the valley. Then, nodding to where the track carries on up an incline, he adds, ‘There is the cottage.’ The dwelling Caroline and Quill had seen on their walk looks larger from this approach. The front verandah is broad and the attic windows catch the light. A tingling ripples across Caroline’ s skin. ‘It is your Scottish blood,’ her mother would say to her daughte rs, when they felt something they couldn’ t explain. ‘From the old folk, the wee people. Listen to it if you want to be wise.’ As they bump up the narrow track, Caroline takes in the view to the north and the east. Blue hills roll away from the wide river, softening into greys. There is hardly a breath of wind. The grasses are lit with butterflies. The mountain above them is richly forested and mysterious. She imagines secluded waterfalls and dappled glades upon those ste ep slopes. The majestic gum tree near the house observes them as they approach. Captain Swanston st eps from the cottage. He is better suited to the outdoors than the confinemen t of the bank, his military bearing more apparent, the vitality in his stance. Caroline imagines him bearing down on her with sword in hand and cutting the legs off her horse. She has heard that he was wounded in India after a bloody battle where he and two other officers, on the brink of disaster, rallied and slaughtered every Arab mercenary . She wonders if such memories are behind him. Caroline has treated the unhealed wounds of those returned from battle: common soldiers and sailors as well as those of rank. She has seen the tremble in their hands and heard them speak of the dreams that did not fade as the battle receded. Captain Swanston is a man who has killed, she thinks, as she takes the hand he extends to help her down from the gig. He is a little surprised at Quill, whom Caroline introduces as her ward, but after greeting the boy he says nothing more. Caroline has instructed Quill to make no mention of their having visited the cottage previously . ‘I am playing a small game,’ she had said to him.
‘Another game,’ he had r eplied. ‘Yes. There may have to be a few, Quill, if we are to establish ourselves here with any success.’ ‘I don’t mind,’ he had said. ‘ Aunt Caroline.’ To the clerk, Swanston says, ‘Go down to the house. There is a box of paperwork I wish collected, and Mrs Swanston may have a list for you. Be back in half an hour .’ The young man nods and takes the gig. ‘I hope you don’t mind me sending him away, Mrs Douglas. I thought it best you peruse the house unobserved,’ says Swanston. ‘No need for the clerk to imagine you are anything but a potential tenant.’ ‘Thank you,’ she r eplies. ‘That is thoughtful, Captain Swanston.’ ‘The parcel is from the fence line there to the stand of eucalypts where the creek divides the property . In our years here there has always been water. There is also a well at the rear, and a pond further back. The vineyard is a relic planted by the previou s owner; I had intended to turn it back into pasture.’ ‘You have no interest in vines?’ ‘Wine is not a lucrative venture here, Mrs Douglas. This colony runs on rum, beer and she ep. It would be wheat, too, if the government would allow us a meaningful export trade to New South Wales.’ ‘Will such things change?’ she asks. Captain Swansto n scrutinises her. ‘The free settlers who have invested in land and property here want nothing but to see this place prosper . Yet the government insists on misusing the convict labour for works that do little to support free enterprise. It was not always so. They were assigned to us and many learned skills that saw them able to take on a trade, and even own their own land in time. No more, Mrs Douglas. We hope for better when we free ourselves of this governor .’ ‘I know nothing of farming, Captain Swanston, nor of commerce,’ Caroline says. ‘But I saw a gang at work this morning as I was out walking. They all appeared to be very young.’ ‘It is a sight you will become accustomed to, if you remain here,’ says Swanston. ‘And I do not recommend you walk about unaccompanied.’ She wants to tell him that Quill accompanied her, but that may appear ridiculous to a man who does not know the boy as she knows him. She
looks around for Quill now, and realises he is standing a little to one side, out of Swanston’ s direct gaze but close to her . She is still adjusting to life with Quill. Sometimes she quite forgets him, only to realise that he has been downstairs at Mrs Roper’s organising her a pot of tea, or retrieving their washing. ‘You are not my servant, Quill,’ she reminds him. ‘No, I am your ward, and I like to help,’ he r eplies with a fleeting smile. At dusk the evening before, they had walked in the nearby park and Quill had almost instantly climbed high into the branches of a tree. There were other people out for an evening stroll and she had looked about to see if he had attracte d their notice. Apparently not. So she had taken a seat on a bench up the hill where a rose garden was in late bloom. She waited. The park emptied. At length, Caroline observed Quill sliding back down the tree and running towards her . When he sank onto the bench beside her, she said, ‘We do not live on a ship anymore, Quill. Do you remember in Buenos Ayres, when I said to take note of the people who had wealth? To watch how they conducted themselves? And in Otaheite, when I asked you to observe the native peoples and how they carried themselves with such an esteem for this world?’ ‘Yes,’ said Quill, kicking his legs back and forth. ‘We will find a home here together where you might run and climb enough to your heart’s content , I promise. And I am also committed to helping you become a young man of no small r eputation for your poise, your manners and your education. Is that still agreeable to you?’ ‘Why do you wish it?’ Quill asked. Caroline paused and considered the question, gazing into Quill’s amber eyes. Because she yearned for family? Because since he had come into her life, she had not felt so alone? No she decided; it was because she had seen his quick mind and his dear soul and she wanted a good life for him. Aloud she said, ‘Because I can help you to make something of yourself—if you are willing.’ The boy nodded. ‘It will not be easy, dear Quill. There will be many temptation s. Many trees you wish to climb when to do so is inappropriate. And, as you know, we cannot talk of meeting on a ship, nor that you were a cabin boy. All these things must become secret in you, if we are to be what we must be
here, guardian and ward. You are the orphaned son of a relative of my father. Even with the friends you will make, you must maintain this fiction.’ Quill said nothing, but he nodded again. ‘If you pay close attention to the way that I speak, to the way people of influence speak, and mimic their manners, you will soon sound as if you are one of them.’ ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Good,’ she r eplied. ‘It is a pretence no different from that most people you meet will be engaged in, Quill. They have mastered their speech, their handwriting and reading, their etiquette at the table, the way to dress and to hold a conversation. If you use that young mind of yours for astute observation, then you will master these conventions, too. In time you will grasp history, literature, philosophy and poetry, arithmetic and science— and, I hope, one or two other languages. If you grow inquisitive about the great minds through the centuries, observe nature and the stars, you will broaden your understanding of character and the many interests that can fill a human life. If you find in yourself reasons to laugh and delight, and you have manners and education, then the world will perceive you as being of great value.’ ‘And you?’ asked Quill. ‘I will be proud of you,’ she said. ‘How do you know I will be able to do all these things?’ he asked. ‘Because you are a boy who has chosen his destiny, and you have availed yourself of a companion. A patron, no less. I will not fail you, Quill. And I do not think that you will fail me.’ ‘So no climbing trees,’ he said. ‘I want you to climb as many trees as you wish; I only ask that you save such exploits for when we are unobserved. Or if we are being pursued by a wild dog, or a boar or a tiger . In that case, you must help me up, too.’
Caroline st eps through the front door into the chill air of a home long unoccupied, an aroma of hay and grain and, underneath it, the musty smell of mice. Swanston has left the back door open, too, to air the house, illuminating the cobwebs that cling to the corners of the hallway . Caroline realises the house has been emptied and sw ept in haste. The front rooms have broad stone tiles, the walls are plastered, the doors panelled. Each of the formal rooms and the two bedrooms has a fir eplace. Each casement window has four glass panes. Above one there is a swallow’ s nest and bird lime on the walls and floor. A hallway of wide timber floorboards leads to a kitchen with a wood stove. A large black kettle hangs from a hook above a fir eplace. There are more bird droppings and the roof has leaked, leaving the dank scent of mildew . Before a long window facing a rear courtyard sits a stone sink. The other rear room has no window and many empty shelves. On one wall there is a heavy sideboard with twelve lar ge metal drawers. ‘Protects against mice,’ says Swanston. ‘We must get a cat,’ Caroline says to Quill. He gives her a brief conspiratorial smile. A washhouse with a bath besmirched by dust, dirt and droppings, and a fir eplace, is at the rear of the courtyard. ‘Broughton was a man of comfort, as you can see,’ says Swanston. ‘Even with this, his first house. Some said he was the n ephew of a lord.’ ‘He was from London?’ ‘A recipient of free passage, thanks to a little burglary and larceny. Of course, in those days there was no prison as such. This island was the prison and every man was put to work according to his skills. Broughton was assigned as treasurer to both the naval office and the police fund. Within a few years, with his ticket of leave granted, he paid five thousand pounds for much of this valley. An extraordinary sum for the time. He built first this cottage and then he began work on New Town Park, where we now reside.’
‘And this did not attract any suspicion, a convict so quickly amassing such a sum given his prior achievements?’ Captain Swanston smiles. ‘It did, Mrs Douglas. There was a great kerfuffle. But no records had been k ept by the officer in charge, nor by Broughton. And neither would testify against the other, so the charges were dropped.’ ‘And it was Broughton who planted the vineyard?’ ‘He did, with convict labour. Landowners, especially those with resources, had the first pick, back then. Clearing land, tending she ep, building houses, any task an owner saw fit. And women, too; maids for the house, cooks and the like.’ ‘But after he passed away, was there no other winemaker who took an interest in the place?’ ‘There was a rather protracted dispute between Broughton’ s sister in England and the wife he had taken here. I had to wait until the matter was settled before I was able to make the purchase, which took some years. By then the vines were mostly as they are now. Many vineyards have failed here, Mrs Douglas. The weather is too cold, the rainfall irregular . Hail blights the summer fruit. The grapes moulder and rot or simply fail to thrive. I have men raising she ep in the midlands, and I have more men taking she ep across Bass Strait, to the pastures of Port Phillip Bay. But a vineyard? The rewards are merely speculation.’ ‘And without labour ...’ she said. ‘Indeed. Few that are enterprising want to stay here once they receive their ticket of leave. And those who must stay have been hardened and broken down by this new system of earning probation through government works. I must realise the expectations of my investors, as I am sure you appreciate, Mrs Douglas, so there can be no romantic speculations.’ I am an investor , Caroline thinks. I have invested funds in this Derwent Bank. Has she made a wise choice, entrusting her affairs to this man? The disr epair of both this cottage and the vineyard unsettle her a little. Is Captain Swanst on wise with his assets? Or is he so successful that this small corner of his estate has been of no consequence? He holds a position on the Legislative Council. People in Hobart speak of him with cautious respect and a measure of admiration. Not someone who wasted time with fools, they said, by which they usually meant the Governor .
Caroline looks into the large walled kitchen garden, her fingers folding about a tall gate of wrought iron forged to look like ivy, twined and leafy. She thinks of the blacksmith, wondering if it is his work. What was his name? Ah, yes: Cornelius. Not only a blacksmith, an artisan. In the garden, she spies a rosemary bush protecting what appears to be a lemon tree, and there is a fruitless peach or nectarine. Perhaps the fruit had already passed, or been plundered by birds. Certainly the tree is in need of pruning. The stone walls around the garden are topped with a strange arrangement of sticks pointing up and out, like the stone walls about the vineyard. ‘Opossums,’ says Swanston, noting her gaze. ‘We have applied the same and found them to be very successful at ke eping the varmints out. But do not leave the gate open or you will wake to a devastation that will surprise you. Dogs will ke ep the trespass ers at bay, and howl if anyone comes within range of the house.’ ‘Trespassers, Captain Swanston?’ ‘Oh, I mean the wallabies and the opossums, Mrs Douglas. They will eat anything we leave unguarded.’ Then he adds, ‘In truth, there is very little real crime here, Mrs Douglas. Once freed from their sentence, the convicts generally avoid the law. Drunke nness is their major fault. There were a few bushrangers years back, but the more remote farms were their target. They are done with now, as are the blacks. And there is a conspic uous police force that must be paid for by settlers, despite England contributing all the criminals.’ Caroline nods. ‘There is much to take in, Captain Swanston.’ ‘Indeed there is, Mrs Douglas,’ he says. ‘My wife and I would be happy to introduce you to people whose company you may welcome , when you are ready .’ He is a salesman, she thinks. ‘Take the time you need to consider the property ,’ says Swanston. ‘I shall remain outside.’ Back inside the cottage, Caroline climbs the staircase, wiping away a layer of dust to reveal the lustre of mahogany . She remembers the great stands of mahogany trees in the gardens of Rio de Janeiro, wreathed in dark leaves and festooned with butterflies as large as her hand. And the wharves filled with timber cut and stacked for export. You and I have both come a long way , she thinks.
Upstairs is not the loft she had imagined, but three small bedrooms, each with a slanting ceiling and dormer window . The two rooms at the front of the house look to the river while the one at the rear has a vista of the mountain. This house could be hers. A place where nobody passes her door. Where horses and carts will not rattle through the night. Where there are no cobblestones, or streets crowded with people and cabs, horse dung, putrilage and slops, laneways strung with washing. Fights, fracas and factory whistles. The silence enfolds her. As if someone had breathed in and was yet to breathe out. Maybe that was her. Maybe she has been holding her breath since fleeing London, since crossing the Atlantic, since biding her time in New York and then boarding the Alliance to travel to this isolated southern latitude. Her heart swells with regret, loneliness and anticipation. It is as if she had this wish tucked de ep inside herself. A cottage amidst fields that fall down to the sea. A mountain at her back. A place of seasons. A place where the light had a sparkling quality to it. Her mother had talked of how, as a child, she had stayed at her grandmother ’s cottage surrounded by moors of purple heather , with a brook where they had caught trout with their bare hands. But that had not been Caroline’ s life. She had only a few memories of Scotland before they moved to London. London, with so many people, with friends and her father’s clients living in the streets all about. Tante Henriette returning from the Continent with gifts from France and Italy, everyone speaking French around the table. Caroline blinks and swallows. ‘Is it where we should live, Quill?’ she asks, as they look out the attic window across the old vineyar d. ‘Here, in this cottage?’ ‘A home,’ he says, as if he is trying out the word for the first time.
Swanston’ s clerk delivers her to four other properties for her inspection through the coming week. Despite their various attractions, Caroline knows her decision is made. But it does no harm for Swanston to believe he must negotiate with her if she is to buy his cottage. She returns early one morning to walk the boundary of the land and to take in the view. She visits the pond and the overgrown kitchen garden. She sits on the stairs to the verandah and imagines waking and looking out at this great river . Today it is mercury in the new light. She thinks of her father saying that a state of quiescence is not a state devoid of senses. The apparition of a rainbow , the immensity of a cloudless sky, the light of a candle dancing on a wall, all these things can vivify the experience of concord. ‘When we rest in the whirls and eddies, when we float and dream,’ she can hear him say , ‘we can feel we are of this. And this. And this.’ She listens to the birds calling. She watches Quill embrace the trunk of the enormous eucalyptus, laying his head against it. She strolls over to join him. ‘Do you remember in Rio de Janeiro, when we saw the butterflies all hanging upside down on the bark?’ she asks. He nods and then says, ‘The tree told me it can talk to trees all over the world.’ ‘Did you ask it to send a message?’ ‘Not yet,’ he says. Caroline settles herself into the leather chair in Swanston’ s office. Tea has been delivered on a tray and poured. Their conversation—of the weather and the latest ships in harbour—is at a pause. ‘You have made a decision, Mrs Douglas?’ Swanston asks. His manner is contained, a man required to be at the beck and call of many .
‘I have,’ she says. ‘It requires the most work, and is the least convenient to the township, however I believe your little cottage is my pick.’ ‘Mrs Douglas,’ Swanston says, returning his cup carefully to its saucer, ‘we both know the property , while in a state of some mild disr epair , is nevertheless in a most favourable position.’ Did he know that she’d made a visit to his competitor at the Van Diemen’ s Bank a week ago and made a d eposit there, too? She had banked a portion of her proceeds from the Alliance ’s cargo, just enough for her to appear as she wished to be perceived: a young widow of some means seeking work as a governess. She takes a metal box from a bag at her feet and places it upon his desk. She does not unlock it. He tells her what he had hoped to get for the land and cottage. It is a wishful sum and he cannot prevent his eyes returning to the metal box. Caroline offers him a third less. As he knows there is growing concern for land values in the colony. Property prices have been slipping. The house is in a state of advanced dilapidation. The walls must be r eplastered. The roof reshingled. The floors r epaired and the whole place painted inside and out. The gardens and outbuildings had been sorely neglected. The property had, after all, been deemed worthy only of hay and grain storage. ‘But still, I find it charming, for the right price,’ she concludes. She senses a ruthlessness in him as he r eplies. ‘I spoke previously , Mrs Douglas, about ensuring the shingles are r eplaced, the exterior restored, and the plaster made good. I stand by my word on that, but the sum you offer, for the parcel of land and the cottage, it is hardly reflective ...’ He finds her a mystery , she sees. He does not want mysteries. He wants money. He wants to sell it to her , and she knows that she must be resolute. ‘It will not be inexpensive to return the property to a liveable condition, even with the efforts you propose, as you yourself know or you might have undertaken it already . This is my best of fer.’ He smiles. ‘I have spoken to my wife about the role of governes s for our three youngest sons. She will make an appointment for the two of you to meet. Perhaps she might also let you have one of our maids to help you settle in, should we come to an arrangement.’ ‘That is most kind, Captain Swanston,’ says Caroline. ‘There is a government school nearby,’ he continues, ‘of which you may already be aware. Our youngest go there. It offers a piecemeal education but
school is not all about lessons. I propose they take private lessons from you in the afternoon s. I am not averse to your ward being included in those lessons if there is no interruption to my sons’ studies. I shall be strict about that.’ Caroline unlocks the box and places before Captain Swanston a stack of pristine British pounds, never circulated, carried from London. She knows such currency carries with it an esteem beyond its face value. Spanish coin, lumps of silver, brass and lead, florins and farthings, pennies and rupees are all currency here in the colony. Wherever ships travel, money travels. But the British pounds have a purity about them. They r epresent class, and Caroline has determined in the short time she has been in the colony that class matters here perhaps even more than in England, for so few people have it. As Mrs Roper had remarked the night before, ‘Most of these free settlers, they are military men or third sons at best, seeking the fortune and position their older brothers will never have to work for .’ Some said the island needed men with vision and Swanston was such a man, as Caroline had learned . Self-made and deliberate, moving with precision towards a future he intended to command. But visions are expensive. He had extensive investments. Some said he was stretched too far. Surely he would see these crisp new pounds for a rundown cottage on a far corner of one of his vast estates as an easy win. ‘You will find it is the exact sum I have offered, Captain Swanston. No one need know of our transactio n. To all beyond this room, I shall be your tenant as we agreed. This is the most important condition of my purchase. My previous d eposit will remain intact.’ Captain Swanston regards her, and the virginal currency before him. ‘I believe you and my wife have several things in common, Mrs Douglas, not least your cleverness.’ Caroline is not sure if this is flattery or something else. ‘You shall have your bargain and my discretion. I will have the transfer of land drawn up. I hope you will be very happy there.’ Is there a catch? Caroline wonders. Has it really happened? She can hear Tante Henriette saying, ‘Money makes its way. It is not only a means of acquiring beautiful and necessary things. In the accumulation of your own wealth, you will find a luxurious and almost dangerous sense of liberation.’
Swanston is one of the colony’ s most esteemed men. As they both stand and he shakes her hand, she realises she has bought, along with his discretion, an alliance of sorts. Perhaps her new life begins here. Perhaps she can begin to worry less about looking back over her shoulder .
D ear Papa , she begins, at the desk in her room at Mrs Roper’s. Her father knows nothing of her d eparture from London. She cannot be certain he is even alive. Still, how to proceed? Who is she writing to? The father of her childhood? The father who bounded down the stairs each morning excited to begin the day? The man who turned their garden and their glasshouse into a world of healing herbs and flowers? He had said to her, ‘I want you to take these seeds and germinate them. Observe what makes them grow and what makes them fail.’ He had given her a journal in which to record her observations. She drew fruit and leaf, bud and seed. She had been perhaps nine or ten when the growing of things became a sort of music in her . Her father remembered the need of everyone who sought his counsel. And yet he was the most discreet of men who never proffered a greeting to a client in the street unless he was greeted first and invited to converse. He would give back a penny if he thought a person had miscalculated his change in a shop. He would take the arm of an elderly woman to shield her from the mud of a passing carriage. Those who could not afford to summon a doctor would send a messeng er to him at midnight or two a. m. A rap of the knocker waking the house, and he would always go. ‘To give them my attention, this is not such a big thing, is it?’ he would say to her, when she asked him about his nocturnal excursions. ‘Sometimes simply listening will help to heal a person more than any medicine. But we give the medicin e, too, for who can say that the two are not reliant one upon the other .’ Often it was a child he was called to attend, and usually too late for anything but death, yet Jacques -Louis went. Afterwards he would grieve. ‘So many little souls too fragile for this world,’ he said. Is she writing to that man, or is she writing to the man he became after the terrible fall, after his head was cracked open? The man Tante Henriette
felt they should never think of again. But how is she to do that? How to stop her heart singing across a darksome lake? Dearest Papa, I hope this letter finds you well. I have sailed from New York around Cape Horn where we survived waves ninety feet high. I saw great fields of whales, for a flock or a school are insufficient to explain the quilted world the sea becomes when they and their young are all at rest together in a bay. There is a language they speak that is haunting and strange. I have a child in my care. His name is Quill. He was a cabin boy on the ship, indentur ed to the captain, who was a good man, in truth, but being my parent’s daughter, I could not bear to think of the child in this unchosen servitude. He appear ed well treated, but what would I know? I found I was in capable of not knowing what would become of him. He is ten years old, we think—we cannot be sure of his age exactly . He has learned to read and write and is proving an excellent student. I have pur chased a cottage in walking distance of the township ... But here she can go no further. There is an abyss of unsaid words she does not know how to traverse. He is not who he had been. Perhaps he did not know who he had been, not always. But he knew what he had done, she was sure of that. She takes the sheet of paper and burns it in the candlelight, words she would never send now as smoke, as hope and as yearning.
‘Come,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘Let us go look together . Are your shoes sensible? Oh, good.’ She takes a well-worn path towards the stone barn, an animated woman, tall, slender, with a long, loping stride. Caroline is struck by her willingness to take off across the fields in search of furniture that might suit Caroline’ s needs at the cottage. She had imagined Captain Swanston to have a wife worn down from birthing and raising eight children. Yet here is this handsome woman with rich chestnut hair and large, serene eyes. It says something about their marriage, Caroline is sure, and wonders what it is. She can hear the ringing of struck metal. ‘It is Cornelius,’ Mrs Swanston says. ‘I shall introduce you. Do not be alarmed by him. He is our tenant, too. He is from the Americas and has an apartment within the barn. He has been here since before the British arrived, long before we arrived. He was employed by the previous owner. He will prove a valuable neighbour if you wish for tools and r epairs. And he ke eps a sharp eye on the place for us. I suspect he has many secrets, Cornelius. Oh! I should not have said that. Please, pretend I did not. You will find that he is a dear soul and is clever at anything he turns his hand to.’ Caroline nods. Mrs Swanston says. ‘I am so sorry for your loss, Mrs Douglas. Will you tell me about your husband?’ ‘There is not really very much to say,’ says Caroline. ‘He died in an accident.’ ‘I did not mean to be insensitive. Please for give me.’ ‘I am not offended,’ says Carolin e. ‘One can grieve and pine, but it does not bring them back.’ ‘Still, I am very sorry. Although perhaps husbands are overrated,’ says Mrs Swanston, ‘though I do not speak of my own.’ She colours.
‘You are the first person to make me smile about it,’ Carolin e offers, warmed by the erratic candour of the woman who is to be her new employer . ‘I am afraid that I have a penchant for frankness, Mrs Douglas. I have tried, as you can imagine, to curb the impulse. My mother assured me it was fortunate I did not grow up in England where it would have been beaten out of me at a boarding school. Ungovernable was the way she characterised it. I see myself in our Robert. Thankfully in India I was allowed a great deal of ind ependence.’ ‘And that is where you met Captain Swanston?’ ‘Yes. My family has lived in Madras for three generations. I was born there. If you haven’t seen India it is almost impossible to describe it. But surely you stopped there on your way here?’ ‘I did not,’ says Caroline. ‘W e made the passage via South America.’ ‘Oh! Why on earth did you do that? Was it not a most arduous and dangerous way to go?’ Caroline laughs. ‘It was at times, but I did not expect to ever have the opportunity again. It took some time to find a suitable ship. Now I am able to look at my map and say I have rounded Cape Horn.’ ‘I understand that, I do,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘My father insisted we were all schooled in geography . It was my favourite subject. Without it, I might never have agreed to live here, at such a remove from the rest of the world.’ ‘They are Hindoos, yes?’ says Caroline. ‘The Indians?’ ‘Yes, mostly. The English lament that they do not embrace Christianity . Yet their faith touches every part of their day. My father has many Indian colleagues. Hindoostani was my first language, learned from my ayah. English my second.’ ‘You miss it.’ ‘I do,’ she says. ‘My mother is still there, and two of my sisters. My father trades in dried goods: tea, rice, spices. Cotton and opium, too. There are always guests on their way to China, or arriving from the Cape of Good Hope or New South Wales. People who have seen the Incan temples, or been to Boston and California. Captain Swanston was the most handsome of all these visitors.’ She smiles. ‘I was seventeen when we married. Once my own girls reached that age, I found it hard to believe I had been so determined to leave my family to wed a soldier who had captured my heart.
Now here I am with all these children ... though only our youngest are at home now .’ ‘You and Captain Swanston have made a singular life here,’ says Caroline. ‘Oh, it is Charles’ s doing. He is the one with the grand ideas. His determination is irr epressible. He believes there is such promise here and he is enormously frustrated by the colonial government that will not give this island a chance to grow out of its convict roots.’ ‘Does it trouble you, to live amongst ...’ ‘Oh, I think if one was fearful of such things, this would be a very worrying place. But as you will see, there is little indication that those who were transported here are England’ s worst criminals. They go to Norfolk Island.’ Each time Caroline hears its name, her heart thuds. Norfolk Island. The most infamous prison in the British Empire. They find the blacksmith working the forge, hammering a shaft of hot metal on a large anvil. He moves slowly and deliberately , habituated to the rhythm of his work. Caroline takes in the bellows, the tools carefully aligned, the barrel of water. When he sees the two women, he ceases his work and wipes his hands on a cloth. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Swanston,’ he says, bowing his head. ‘Hello, Corneliu s. This is Mrs Douglas, who has leased the cottage. You are about to see much work being undertaken before she can move in. And she is to be a tutor for the boys. She has newly arrived from New York with her ward.’ ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Douglas,’ says Cornelius. There is a brief moment of recognition as he bows his head to her in turn, but he makes no reference to their earlier meeting, and nor does she. ‘I hope you will be very happy here.’ ‘Thank you, Cornelius,’ she says. ‘May I ask, were you here when the vineyard was making wine?’ ‘Indeed I was, Mrs Douglas.’ ‘Do you have an interest in the vineyard?’ Mrs Swanston asks. ‘I have little knowledge of such things,’ says Caroline. ‘And I am hardly arrived.’
‘Well, let us look at furniture you may need, so that your settling in goes easier,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘Perhaps, Cornelius, you will organise the wagon to deliver any pieces that Mrs Douglas chooses?’ ‘Of course, Mrs Swanston,’ he says. ‘I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Cornelius,’ says Caroline. ‘I am always here if you are in need of assistance, Mrs Douglas,’ he r eplies.
The maid Mrs Swanston sends from the house is easily startled. Every time Caroline enters the room, the girl seems close to tears. Mrs Swanston has told her that Bessie was a girl of fifteen when she was dispatched from England for poaching. It earned her a sentence of fourteen years. Bessie had been aboard a convict ship that had taken some eleven months to reach the colony. Apparently there had been severe storms and diversions to make the necessary r epairs. Mrs Swanston had said no more, but the story had hung in the air between them. Eleven months for a voyage that would normally have taken six, seven at most, even with storms. Caroline wonder ed if men talked of it over rum and whisky, that voyage. Perhaps they reminisced, boasted, laughed and joked about what befell the one hundred and seventy-three women and children aboard. None of the women wrote an account, but there were, of course, rumours. It was too long. Bessie herself barely spoke a word. At nineteen she was so small as to be easily mistaken for someone much younger . Mrs Roper had told Caroline that the female convicts used to be paraded on deck before disembarkation. There they were perused by soldiers, settlers and ex-convicts who had earned the Governor ’s favour. If a woman or girl was chosen, she was assigned a master and expected to work for him as a domestic servant. Some of the properties were remote. If she fell pregnant, or had some disagreem ent with the master or his wife, she would be returned to the female prison in Hobart, a place of misery and madness. When she was deemed ready—t he penury of solitary confinement generally mollifying her and the child placed in the government orphanage—she was once more paraded for selection to more prospective employers. If she was not selected, she laboured with the other women in an endless cycle of boiling wool, sewing convict garb, and laundering and mending the uniforms of government and military officials. Women who received no placements lived out their sentences at the factory .
Bessie had twice been so assigned, Mrs Swanston had told her, and twice returned. But no children, as far as Mrs Swanston understood. Caroline had tended many sorts of women in the apothecary with her father. Some women found themselves impoverished when a parent fell sick or died. Some were injured in factory work. Plenty were pimped by a man or used for his criminal purpose. If a woman wasn’t married she was a concubine, a moll, a whore, a mott, a ewe, a bat, a crack, a flash piece of mutton or , the saddest of all to Caroline, a kinchin mott: a child prostitute. Caroline had seen women lift their skirts and be taken against a wall for the price of a few coins, returning when it was done to the two children hunkered down at the entrance to the laneway . Without a man to protect and care for her, a woman must do what she could to make her way. Young girls were meant to wait for a prince, but princes were not to be relied upon. Caroline knew that story . Swanston made good on his promise. Workers come to r epair the cottage walls and windows. They also r eplace the thatching and whitewash the exterior . Inside, Caroline, Bessie and Quill swe ep away the cobwebs and mouse droppings. They scrub off the silt that dusted the walls and windowpanes. Caroline discove rs nests of straw and some long-disintegrated woollen coat or trousers in the large metal-drawered kitchen cabinet. There is a lingering musk of furred bodies and blind hairless young. How many mice had inhabited the cottage, and had they, too, come all the way from England, or America, or their ancestors perhaps? Did they have stories? Had this chest of drawers once been a great apartment, each drawer a different family, or a different political party? Had the mice on the top floor been Church of England and the drawer below the Papists? And the bottom drawers? Well, that would be the atheists, she supposes. One morning she comes across a creature that looks like a large brown mouse wedged into a space beside the washhouse, quivering from some encounter . When she picks it up, it bites her—but not hard—with its long curved teeth, and she wraps it in a handkerchief until she can feel its racing heart settle. Upon examination, its face is longer than that of an ordinary mouse. Its hands and feet are ready tools for digging, or climbing. And then she realises it is like the wallabies here. Native to this place. She shows it to Quill and Bessie, then takes it to the edge of the forest and sets it down.
‘Goodbye,’ she says. ‘Go well. Stay out of the way of crows. And snakes.’ For a moment the creature is frozen with uncertainty . Then it twitches and scampers away , disappearing into the leaf litter . Bessie removes with care the nests in the eaves where bird babies had hatched. She lines up these creations of mud, twigs and dried grass on the washhouse sill. ‘What shall we do with them?’ Quill asks. ‘I’m not sure,’ Caroline r eplies. In London, the great flocks of waterbirds that once inhabited the Thames had removed themselves to other wetlands. The kestrels, falcons and starlings had also learned to live further afield. Here, the wild occupants vastly outnumbered the human. It felt as if the newly cleared lands, the cart tracks and roads, were a temporary incursion which in a few years might be grown over , the bush and its occupants reclaiming all. Before Caroline and Quill walk back to Mrs Roper’s, she sets out a blanket in the garden and offers Bessie and Quill mint tea. Bessie insists on serving them. Quill looks up at the roof. Within a few moments, he has enrolled Caroline in helping him to place a ladder at the side of the house. ‘Let’s go up and see,’ he says. Bessie looks uncertain. But, with encouragement, the girl climbs onto the new roof and the three of them sit there, drinking tea and eating Mrs Roper’s Banbury slice as the river turns gold and mauve in pr eparation for the late summer evening. This is how my father’s life changed, Caroline thinks. Falling off a roof. Or had it been the night on the bridge? The two events are inextricable. Once the floorboards are r epaired, Caroline, Quill and Bessie lay down sacking from the barn and whitewash the walls. To Caroline’ s surprise, Bessie with a paintbrush is a thing to behold. Her arms have freed themselves from her narrow body. Caroline watches in silence from the doorway as Bessie moves the paint across the wall with a thoughtful ferocity . She is humming. It might be a dance.
‘You must let me know if she doesn’t suit,’ Mrs Swanston had said. ‘I admit she is unsettling. You will think me unkind in offering her to you, but I had not wanted her to be without a place of employment. Our big house with all its comings and goings seems to daunt her ... But do be strict and watchful.’ I shall ke ep her , if I can, Caroline thinks. Cornelius brings a cart loaded with the furniture Caroline has chosen from the unwanted pieces Mrs Swanston has stored in the barn. Another servant of the Swanston s’ accompanies him, and over various trips they lift and carry beds, chairs, mattresses and tables into the cottage. Carolin e and Quill retrieve the trunks they have had in storage, and pack their belongings from Mrs Roper ’s. When they arrive back at the cottage, Caroline finds that Bessie has been busy in their absence, trimming back the weeds and grasses leading to the front and back doors. She has also collected a number of stones, each a little larger than a currant bun, which she has whitewashed to mark the pathway . When Caroline expresses her surprise and pleasure, the girl nods but says nothing. Once they are settled in, Carolin e makes a lunch of coq au vin and offers Bessie another helping, but the girl shakes her head. She tries not to need anything. Caroline considers what Bessie needs so very much to have become that way .
Caroline remembers the first time she saw Tante Henriette’ s apartment. The walls were covered in a cream-striped wallpaper , the tall windows hung with pale damask curtains. The carpet in the sitting room was turquoise, patterned with flowers and cherubs. There was a glass chandelier and a leadlight lampshade alight with yellow butterflies. The chairs were embroidered fabric, the cushions a fur of some sort. Caroline ran her fingertips across them. A glass-fronted specimen case held a selection of green beetles, some almost as large as her hand, creatures Caroline had never imagined existed. The books were bound in brown and red vellum, the words printed in gold on each spine, their titles in English, Latin, French, German, Italian— science and medicine, the philosophes , mathematics ... She had opened the door with a little brass key and leaned in and smelled them. ‘You have such beautiful things,’ Caroline said. Tante Henriette set down a tray of coffee and touched the walnut table with her fingertips before passing her niece a napkin of starched white linen. ‘It is all about the choices we make,’ she said. ‘Tante Henriette is rich,’ Augusta had exclaimed upon receiving a teacup and saucer painted with pale pink roses for her fourteenth birthday. The porcelain was so delicate it was almost translucent. Their father had said, ‘What does it matter what a thing costs, if it is given with love? Money is not at the heart of things.’ Their mother had said nothing. Caroline loved Tante Henriette. She loved the gifts her aunt gave her, too. The silver bracelet, the volumes of fairy tales with colour plates, a specimen case of Arachnids of the New World she had received for her sixteenth birthday . It had shocked them all, how enormous and terrifying such creatures could be.
‘I will never travel the world,’ Augusta had said, and it would prove to be true. It wasn’t that Caroline and her family did not live well. The apothecary was successful, her mother and father respected. They were a household of two worlds and two languages. The silver serving dishes, the crystal champagne coupes, the special crockery , the coffee cups and silverware, the vases on the sideboard, the embroidered table linens, the two worn velvet rabbits ... all these things were from her father’s family, taken out of France in the dead of night before her father and Tante Henriette became orphans. Their houseke eper , Esther, had travelled with them from Scotland to London when Caroline was six, Augusta four and baby Isobel still growing within their mother’s belly. Their home in Chelsea had two storeys and an attic. Their beds were warm and comfortable, each mattress on a wooden frame, the head and foot of wrought iron painted white. Both Caroline and Augusta had a quilt sewn by their mother and three dresses apiece and a special dress for occasions. Their boots were of good leather and their gloves, too. Each had a Sunday bonnet and a day bonnet. Yet the carpets in the hallways were growing threadbare along the strip where they walked, and about the edges. The everyday plates and cups were earthenware, the sort that would not easily break or chip. Mama and Esther knitted and sewed their clothes, embroidered linen and worked lace, and taught Caroline and Augusta these skills, but Augusta was always the better student with needle and thread; Caroline preferred to be in the garden. Father had built a large glasshouse at the rear where he grew plants for the apothecary . Calamint (useful for women’ s troubles, including preventing conc eption but also jaundice, l eprosy, worms and a persistent cough). Water caltrops (making a poultice for hot inflammati on, cankers and sore throats). Rhubarb, both English and Italian (for ulcers, sciatica, gout and cramps). Sage (for the gums) and rosemary (for head, stomach, liver and belly, dim eyes and to quicken the senses). Gooseberries (for expelling stones in the kidneys). Strawberries (whose leaves, when boiled in wine and water, cooled the liver, while the fruit was excellent for inflammation). Father said his mind was like a compass drawn by the mysteries of nature to the study of plants. If she wished it, she could follow in his
footst eps, assisting him in the apothecary , the first woman chemist of London. It would be hard work, but it would be a gift to the world. At fifteen, she began her apprenticeship, studying in the evenings and helping her father in the apothecary whenever she could. The curious child who had rolled together sprigs of wild mint, lavender and thyme, placing them beneath her pillow so she might breathe them in before she sl ept, now dried these same herbs and made them into nosegays for sale. The child unperturbed by wound or injury, intent on understanding what lived beneath the skin or festered upon it, assisted clients with an ulcerated mouth, a we eping eye, a boil on the neck, a rot in the foot. She was discreet when a man arrived with a problem only fit to share with her father at the rear of the shop. Women would come also, worrying that she was too young to share the discharges or blisters between their legs, but they learned that she was always heedful and the remedies effective. Sometimes Caroline had to walk to the river before she could return to work, so awful were the things she saw inflicted on a woman’ s body. Now here she is in a cottage at the foot of a great mountain. She has purchased rugs, crockery and cookware. Not the beautiful things Tante Henriette might have bought, but good, practical, durable things her mother would have chosen. A few particular treasures had travelled with her from London, but they remained secure in one of the locked trunks upstairs. On Quill’s bed is the quilt her mother made for Augusta. The other quilt, made for Caroline, is lying over her as she reminisces. Her fingers run along the familiar edging and over the pattern of squares that has always soothed her. Mama would be pleased to see the quilts here. But what would she make of her daughter living alone as a widow, guardian to a boy of no family or history, in a cottage purchased through criminal enterprise? Pretending to all the world that she was someone she was not ...
Tante Henriette had promised Caroline a high tea. They meet at her apartment, Caroline wearing a new dress with a green velvet sash her mother had made for her birthday . ‘You are eighteen, dear niece,’ Tante Henriette says, upon her arrival. ‘I think it is time I teach you something.’ She takes Caroline’s hand and draws her into the bedroom. It is large, with an Oriental carpet and a four-poster bed. Along one wall are three walnut wardrobes. Tante Henriette opens the first wardrobe to reveal a collection of dresses in various styles. On the shelves are an array of shoes neatly paired. There is also a drawer that holds necklaces and earrings that twinkle as they catch the light. Then her aunt opens the second wardrobe to reveal a series of wigmaker ’s heads. On each head sits a wig of a different colour and style. Within this wardrobe, drawers contain trays of moustaches and beards in various colours and styles. ‘Real human hair ,’ her aunt says, stroking one. There are cravats and neckties, socks and tie pins. Cufflinks and rings. In the third wardrobe there is a selection of men’ s trousers, coats and shoes. Caroline is intrigued. Tante Henriette is a companion. Caroline is unsure which duchess. Arlington. Darlington. Blessington. Poole. There are a few. Tante Henriette accompanies these ladies when they travel abroad. She is often gone for months at a time. Being fluent in four language s is a useful skill. She says the English speak foreign languages with as much flavour as their overcooked vegetables. ‘You have a lover?’ Caroline asks. Her aunt laughs at Caroline’ s puzzlement. ‘ Regarde et apprends! ’ she says. Tante Henriette chooses a dress of patterned chintz with sleeves edged in white lace. She takes down a wig of long pale curls. She opens one of the
boxes stacked to one side of the room and takes out a hat of cream straw with a small adornment of fabric bluebells. Lastly she puts on a pair of women’ s shoes constructed to discreetly give her several inches in height. ‘I would not recognise you,’ says Caroline, when her aunt reappears in her new attire. Her face is powdered, her lips are a soft pink and she wears a pair of rose-coloured lunettes. She looks younger , coquettish, English. ‘ Exactement ,’ says her aunt. ‘Now you. Who would you like to be?’ Caroline considers. ‘I would like to be a boy ,’ she says. Her aunt selects a suit of grey poplin and a white shirt. Once Caroline is dressed, Tante Henriette chooses a wig of short blond hair and, with some giggling, tucks Caroline’ s hair underneath. She ties a cravat at Caroline’ s neck and affixes a tie pin—a pale stone in a gold tulip. Lastly she chooses a pair of men’ s shoes. ‘Helpful that we are the same size,’ says Tante Henriette. ‘And now, le chapeau .’ They stand in front of the full-length mirror . ‘How do you feel?’ asks her aunt. ‘Naughty ,’ says Caroline, laughing. ‘ Très bien. T u es parfaite. Alors, si tu es prête, on y va? ’ ‘We are going out?’ Caroline asks. ‘Why not?’ r eplies Tante Henriette, smiling. ‘But you must never breathe a word of this. Not to Augusta. Not to your father. Not a word to your mother . It is our secret.’ ‘ Alors c’est notr e secret ,’ Caroline agrees, and out they go. They attend a production of Macbeth at Covent Garden followed by high tea at Brown’ s. Caroline finds it highly amusing to play the role of a young man, and to witness Tante Henriette as an English lady, her French accent evaporated, her rounded English vowels flawless. But upon their return to Tante Henriette’ s, having shed their disguises, Tante Henriette sits Caroline down. ‘Your mother is dying,’ she says, and the fun of the birthday afternoon crashes into silence. ‘No,’ says Caroline, but she has seen the tremors, the pallor of her mother’s skin. She has seen her mother drop a cup on the table as if her fingers could no longer hold it. She has observed the increasi ng effort of speech.
‘We must not pretend it isn’t so. It does not help her. I have seen this palsy before. Your father knows it, too. It will waste her away to nothing. We must hope that it is quick. But your father is not well either. You see how his brain is still addled from the fall.’ Caroline stares into her aunt’ s face. ‘What must I do?’ she asks. ‘Give her every care. It will be difficult, but you have Augusta to assist you. I cannot anticipate how your father will cope without your mother by his side. You must not rely on anything he has promised you.’
Caroline thinks of a French saying: Weather, wind, women and fortune change like the moon. If only her spirits and humours changed with the lunar cycle instead of hourly, tossed about by the unpredictab ility of the Hobart weather . Despite the saints days and proverbs being antithetical to the season, there was talk in every shop as if the wind of Ash Wednesday , and the clear day on Palm Sunday, had indicated a bad year. Yet what was to be done when January had been so fierce and cold, and February moist? Last year’s late spring might prove to be a blessing, but did the rain on the first Sunday after Easter still predict a good harvest and a fat pasture? Or plenty of grass but little hay? Surely the snowfall at Christmas had been a good omen, not a bad one. Or would there be rain for the entirety of the next summer? Despite the latitude, all these truisms were employed with liberal affection by the residents buying tallow and salt, sugar and garden spades, fabric and buttons, as if they still applied to Cornwall or Dublin or Lancashire. In the kitchen garden, Caroline begins to feel her way into this upside- down world. If there had once been turnips, carrots and other useful vegetables, it was hard to tell amidst the lush weeds rooted firmly in the earth. Bessie discovers potatoes—purple, tawny and beige—but they lack flavour when cooked, though they eat them anyway . A climber of some sort has almost jammed the beautiful wrought-iron gate. The rosemary has gone woody. Two espaliered apple trees appear to have died off, tangled with passionfruit vine. Raspberry canes have proliferated but are producing only a few bitter fruits. Caroline prunes back the lemon tree to a manageable size and the other fruit trees, too, taking out the damaged or dead wood and sealing the cuts. Bessie chops back the cre eper and the rosemary and together with Quill they pr epare for winter crops. The gardening is tiring but Caroline feels stronger for it. Her body warmed by sunshine and a brilliant sky above, she finds her mind is less
likely to wander into dark pools of thought. With her hands in the soil, the uncertain future becomes less compelling than the soft texture of the earth and the food she imagines budding and ripening. She could place an advertisemen t for another servant to assist them, but she does not want to announce herself in this way. The Hobart Town Gazette is a spyglass into all that concerns the colony. Every advertisement is assessed and interpreted. Between Bessie, Quill and herself, they will make do. Quill carries the tumble of weeds and cuttings to a pile outside the walled garden which, they discover , is quickly eaten overnight by the opossums and wallabies. A new space is given to compost within the walled garden. Mrs Swanston gives them cuttings of geraniums, nasturtiums and daisies and seeds for marigolds and calendula from her gardens. Caroline places the cuttings on the outdoor table ready for planting, but by morning these too have been consumed. Caroline hears Quill saying to Bessie, ‘Damn and tarnation on those opossums and wallabies for they will eat anything and everything!’ She is so in agreemen t she does not remonstrate with him about his cursing. Instead she shows him how to plant out a seed tray. He is to ensure each morning that the soil is moistened and that he talk to the seedlings in French. ‘ Grandissez, les petits, grandissez! ’ He and Bessie ferry cow manure from the nearby paddocks, finding the task both r epellent and highly amusing. He makes a game of throwing the dried pats to Caroline, rather like spinning disintegrating dinner plates, and it makes them laugh. Caroline thinks of all the plants grown for the apothecary . The lavender oil she diffused. The rosemary ste eped and rose petals dried. The draughts of violets in wine, the decoctions of comfrey , the ointment of sh epherd’ s purse. A salve made from winter green, a syrup from onions and honey. But she’d always had her father and her mother to guide the garden through the seasons, knowing when to plant, when to harvest, and when to cut back and start again or leave to reseed. Having her own garden, in a new climate with quixotic patterns of weather , required patience and persistence, adaptation and continual attention. Mrs Julia Walker, a Quaker from across the valley, visits and says to Caroline, ‘My sister-in-law has written from Sydney . She remembers you fondly from the voyage out, and your assistance during the terrible loss of
her husband. She has reminded us to ensure that you have all you need to get established ...’ Bessie suggests chickens. There is an old henhouse and, in the coming days, Caroline is surprised to find Bessie more capable with timber, hammer and nail than the kneading of bread dough. Hay is carried from the barn and nests are made ready. Bessie visits the Walkers and returns with five small brown Quaker hens. She holds their feathered bodies as if they are old friends. Caroline can hear rain falling, a light, persistent shower. She draws the bedcovers close to her chin. There is a weariness in her back and neck, an ache in her arms and legs after the work in the garden. She feels the solitariness of the cottage perched beneath the mountain slopes. ‘Oh, Mama,’ she whispers, ‘if you knew the things that have happened since you died.’ ‘Mousie, you are not alone,’ she hears her mother say. ‘The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft astray .’ The overwhelmi ng weight of the past swe eps her up, the fearsome twists and turns she has taken. The rain falls harder, drumming on path and sill, window and door, and tears fall, spilling out of her, running down her cheeks. She has had to be strong. To lie and disguise, to plan and deceive. She has invented a self to lay over the girl she is inside. But the other Caroline, the Caroline Colbert of her youth, she is still young and vulnerable and lonely. She would like to rest. She wants to be true to that Caroline who tended a glasshouse of medicinal plants, who was tutored in healing, who lived in a house with French silver and threadbare carpets, and lost everyone she loved. But Caroline Douglas does not cling to ideals. She knows that only disappointment lies that way. She is waiting for opportunities , biding her time. But will this new Caroline ke ep the old Caroline safe? Will she be able to care for Quill and Bessie? Her breathing quietens. She senses that the two Carolines are allies of sorts. They need one another . And she needs to hold fast to both of them, lest she break apart. Lest she lose some part of herself that might yet find the courage to r epair the past. She wants her mother to hold her. She wants Augusta asle ep nearby, not laid in a grave. She wants her father to whisper in French that he believes in her, but he frightens her now. He is not the man she once loved. He will
never be that man again. Even if he were here, how could she ever trust him? Yet he had been her dearest friend. When the grief settles at last, she turns on her side and falls asle ep. Outside the rain continues. The waxing autumn moon is hidden by clouds. Night animals with their pouches and bounding legs, their brown and golden fur, hide in burrows and shelter beneath ferns and trees. Birds sit mute upon branches observing the night world. Spiders rest within curled leaves and insects seek the protection of bark. The mountain is alive with water slipping between rocks, splashing on fronds, sliding down the stems of grasses, sinking into soil, peat and moss. Harder and harder comes the rain. The flagstones in the courtyard are washed clean. The rainwater barrels fill and overflow . The chickens roost de ep in their straw. The house sle eps. Strange dreams chase Caroline until morning.
Chère Tante Henriette, Our neighbours across the hill, the Walkers, came to visit. He is Mr Washington Walker and is strikingly handsome, although most earnest. He is the brother of a woman I met on the ship whose husband died on the journey . His wife, Mrs Julia Walker, is warm- hearted and has made us most welcome. Last night, they visited on the dark moon, and Mrs Swanston brought her three youngest sons who are my new pupils. We all sat in the garden well wrapped in blankets, for the evening was cool. Mr Walker gave us a lesson on the stars of the Southern Hemisphere which we all found most engaging. I find it strange to imagine that you do not see these same stars but look into another sky, with other constellations. Or at least I hope you do. We have no North Star but neither is there a South Star. The Milky Way is no small tail as it is above London, but a river of stars midstream, rising from behind the mountain all the way across the river to the horizon. But such a description is insufficient to capture the immensity of the skies here. I am trying to familiarise myself with this multitude of celestial dimensions, of dark portals and illuminated passages that suggest unimagin able distances. I find myself in those moments feeling utterly inconsequential, grateful to be salvaged by this good earth. Mr Walker talked of the ancient occultists and their belief that all of life was about becoming. Tiny grains of rock and the particles of earth, they are all in the process of becoming human, while we humans, almost in reverse, are in the process of becoming planets. When one considers the time that these stars may have been shining on their infinite stage, perhaps it may yet be true. The dust I will become after my death may yet become stardust, and the earth that grows cabbages and potatoes will, in a way, become human, for do
we not eat what transforms from seed into plant? How much he reminded me of Papa in that moment. Like Papa, Mr Walker is fond of the Greek mystics and explaine d to the boys the words of Aristotle: ‘Yonder, therefore above the stellar virtues, stand other heavens to be attained.’ Julia Walker spoke of how such men also believed the Milky Way contained the seeds of our souls and every human soul descended through one of the twelve doorways of the zodiac. This caused much animation in the boys, who wanted to claim the ram, the lion or the bull, but I reminded them that if they were to look to the ancients for power, it was the female figure of Isis who was said to transmit intelligence. It recalled for me an evening in London, with you and Mama and Papa wrestling over some notion, and it pressed upon me, the absence of you all. The Walkers speak of establishing a Quaker school where children might benefit from a gentler, more expansive education. At the government school nearby , an education is consider ed the ability to recite a Psalm, construct a short sentence or calculate three numbers. I worry what will become of children offered such rough knowledge. The Swanston boys are the twins Nowell and Robert, who are twelve, and their younger brother George, aged ten. They attend school each morning because their parents insist they must learn to engage as young gentlemen with all manner of people. In the afternoons, along with my ward, Quill, they are under my care and endure my curriculum. When they see no point in speaking French I sing to them. Later I hear them in their garden as I walk home across the paddock ... ‘ Et le cou, et le cou, Et la tête, et la tête Et les yeux, et les yeux, Et le bec, et le bec, Alouette, Alouette! Ah! ah! ah! ah! ’ Do you remembe r teaching it to me? They also like to hear me tell stories from the Re volution. I have taught them ‘La Marseillaise’. I know it may be consider ed scandalous in this British outpost, but I
am expanding their minds. Liberty , equality , fraternity remain noble sentiments when not accompan ied by violence, I remind them. Of course, I say nothing of our family . Quill and I are reading Robinson Crusoe and he is excited by it. He is also learning vocabulary . A sailing ship is un voilier , and butterflies fluttering around the verandah are les papillons . Birds in the trees are les oiseaux . Darting across the wall are les petits lézards. The other morning he presented me with a clutch of late lilies and in a near perfect accent said, ‘ Regarde, Tante Caroline, des fleurs du jardin pour toi .’ I was so excited we br eakfasted in Fr ench. Last week, although it is only autumn, there was a snowfall on the mountain. A bitter wind growled down the slopes behind the house worrying every door and window. Within a day of the snowfall, it was all blue sky and sunshine again, and snow melt filled the creek by the cottage. Today flurries of rain rattle against the windows. The fields and paths are wet and muddied and the river has disappear ed behind a gauze of mist. I cannot see even the other side of the valley, and still it rains. But there is a warm fire burning and I can smell the bread Bessie is baking. She is no natural cook but is willing to learn. She is also unletter ed so we ar e beginning with r ecipes. We have been gifted a kitten fr om the W alkers. A completely black one that is settled on my lap as I write. Quill has named her Malachy and she is to become our resident mouser , although at the moment she gives no indication of any skill but affection. What I have not mentioned until this moment, for I can hear you cautioning me against garnishin g the past, is that a vineyar d lies in disr epair beyond the cottage. It once produced a very good champagne, or so I have been told on excellent authority by several who remember it. Perhaps some things, like stars and rain, have an ability to stir things ancient within us. For give my wistful soul. I hope you are well, dear aunt. With great affection and fervent wishes for the day when we will see one another again. Your niece, Caroline
She does not dare to send this letter either .
Caroline’ s early walk becomes a ritual. Often the dawns are calm, the river breathless and silken, so wide it might easily be mistaken for the sea. Beginning in the distant highlands, it is now saltwater , the ocean close. Along the river’s edge, she sees trees bent in the wind, their trunks twisted, yet still their branches grow. She sees clouds reflected in rockpools. Crabs nestle and periwinkles cling to crevices as the water laps. Great banks of brown and green sea grasses wash ashore after rough weather . At low tide, she levers oysters as big as her hand off the rocks, taking them home in her basket to shuck them with Quill and Bessie. They eat them raw for breakfast or cooked in a simple cream sauce with a bread topping for supper. She discovers a grove of rough-barked oak. Instead of leaves, long fine needles hang from the branches, each encircled with pale amber rings, the ground covered in a thick carpet where they have fallen. When the wind passes through the grove, it sighs. At the heart of the copse she finds a single enormous tree. Its lower branches are barren and grey, and it would be easy to assume the tree is dead but, looking up, Caroline sees a profusion of hard brown geometric nuts on every twig and branch. All the trees about this one have formed a grand circle. They are her descendants, this tree a great-grandmother with her children and grandchildren living close. A matriarch wizened by time, stiff in her branches, slow in her movements, protected from wind and still living in their midst, her life’ s work about her . Caroline takes Quill to show him. ‘Look,’ he says, and lies down in a hollow of soft needles. It is the perfect size for his body . Now Caroline observes other hollows and sees the impressions other bodies have made. She finds a fire circle almost covered over. She lies down in the hollow beside Quill, feeling the shape of the body that had lain here before her. A hip, a shoulder , a person of her size. Quill passes her one
of the dark shards of stone scattered on the ground. It fits into her palm and she curves her fingers around it, her thumb fitting a groove for purchase. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I think it is a knife. See the edge? It is a blade for cutting away furred skin or carving meat from the bone. Levering an oyster from its shell.’ ‘Who made it?’ asks Quill. ‘The people who were here before us.’ ‘Why didn’ t they use knives?’ Quill asks. ‘Because they lived in another time,’ she says. ‘If we had come forty years ago, even ten years ago, we might have seen them.’ Quill is thoughtful, looking up into the trees. ‘Where are they now?’ ‘Gone. Killed.’ ‘But why?’ ‘For this island. For their land. They might have welcomed you,’ she says, ‘for you are yet to be formed. But not the rest of us. We are strange people come to a place that is not our home.’ ‘Exc ept it is,’ he whispers. ‘This is our home now. We do not have another .’ Caroline recalls London with its fog and mist, rain and mildew , its crowded streets and the pervasive smells of se epage, garbage and sewage. An old city mouldering beneath a downcast sky. Here was a radiant new world with high blue skies and fresh winds, momentous clouds and sunshine. This is where I will live out my days, she thinks. It feels a remarkable declaration. ‘Forgive us,’ she says, as she places the flint back on the oak needles. ‘Who must for give us?’ Quill asks. ‘The past,’ she says. ‘And the future.’ Some mornings she follows paths and wallaby tracks up onto the mountain and finds creeks and waterfalls, pools of sunlight and boulders covered in lichen, trees with their roots wrapped around rocks and others balancing on the edges of cliffs. She sees a golden echidna bury its head in an embankment when it senses her nearby . On a ridge, she looks down into a quarry where convicts are at work in yellow suits marked with arrows. Their legs are chained and their bodies are bowed by the weight of rocks they push in carts. The overseer applies a
whip to an older man he believes is working too slowly. The other prisoners continue on, disregarding the punishment for the ordinariness of it. In the schoolroom at the Swanstons’ Quill rarely volunteers an answer to her questions, but when Caroline passes behind him at his desk he is steadily reflectin g on a myth, pursuing a mathematical solution or drawing a picture with a minimalism of line that reveals something of life. They have a new ritual as they sit by the fire after supper . ‘The sun was a stripe across the bed when I awoke,’ she says, by way of a beginning. ‘There were two flies on the door of the outhouse. Black with inner wings of something paler ,’ he says. ‘I saw two blue dragonflies doing loops, round and round over the pond,’ says Caroline. ‘There are so many different ones,’ says Quill, giving her a brief smile and stretching out his toes, which do not quite touch the floor when he sits in the leather armchair. ‘Four came up on the dice more than three, when George and I were playing. But with Robert it was a day of sixes.’ ‘On my morning walk,’ says Caroline, ‘I saw a pine cone rolling in the pull and give of the tide. And there were ladybirds resting on a line of foam.’ ‘The sky was the colour of a bruise this afternoon,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think rain is coming.’ ‘I visited the big tree,’ says Quill. ‘And how was it today?’ ‘Friendly ,’ says Quill. ‘I visited it, too,’ says Caroline. ‘It does feel friendly . My father would say there is one life that pulsates in all things. He would talk about a man called Spinoza, a philosopher , who thought that our minds were nodes of infinite thought and this allowed us to rise above the senses in a sort of God state. But my father thought that our minds were at their finest when they were in tune with our senses. For him, life was about the sense of connection with all things—plants in particular . And if that were true, then we would all be familiar to one another , I guess.’ ‘Friends everywhere,’ says Quill. Caroline notes the colour in Quill’s cheeks and realises the boy is filling out. He is still lean but he appears more substantial. His hair is now over his
ears, the chestnut shine a pleasing contrast with his striking amber eyes. He is taller, too, and she resolves to place a ruler on his head and mark the wall with a pencil, to ke ep track of all this growing.
The Swanstons’ front door opens onto a spacious vestibule hung with Chinese paintings. The morning room looks out upon a fountain fed from the creek. There are low sculptured hedges and circular rose gardens, trellises of jasmine and beds of geraniums. All the downstairs living rooms have French doors that open onto the surrounding sandstone patios. Cedar lines the walls and the shelves of the library which adjoins Captain Swanston’ s office. Every room has a marble fir eplace and several rooms have carved doors of lacquered rosewood. Alcoves hold bronze statues of dancing Indian deities, and there are tapestries of Indian myths. At the western end of the house, a conservatory has been created to catch the afternoon sun. Wicker furniture with soft, plump cushions and a glass-topped table make a sitting room amidst citrus trees heavy with fruit. There are several types of lemon, a cumquat and a lime, and the air is sweet with zest. Mrs Swanston is keen to point out the pots of pink and white orchids from China and tomatoes from South America ripe with red and yellow fruit climbing towards the glass roof. Caroline, too, could build a glass room on the western side of her cottage in which to grow seedlings and frost-intolerant plants. But then she reminds herself that she is, to anyone with an interest, a tenant and nothing more. She must go slowly, quietly, as is proper for a widow, and wait to gain a better measure of the place. She presents Mrs Swanston with a gift of a cordial she has made from lemons she had been gifted by the Walkers. ‘How delightful ,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘I love lemon in everything. If you need more, please have one of the maids pick them here for you. Now tell me, are you settling in? It did take me a while.’ ‘Yes,’ says Caroline. ‘Thank you. We are settled, and very grateful for the furniture you so generously of fered.’ ‘I am pleased it is being used,’ Mrs Swanston says. ‘My husband threatens to hold an auction whenever I fall in love with something new .’
As the tea is being poured, Caroline asks about the smoke signal she had seen on her early walk. ‘Across the river?’ Mrs Swanston asks. ‘That will be a communiqué with Port Arthur. Perhaps there is an es caped convict or some request for supplies. More rum for the soldiers, perhaps.’ She gives a slight roll of her eyes. ‘You have visited the prison?’ Caroline asks. ‘I have not, but my husband has made the excursion on two occasions. He tells me that men work as beasts and are treated little better. Perhaps worse, for no horses or bullocks are allowed onto the peninsula. In fact, there is a railway where the convicts are forced to pull the carriages for visitors. I try not to imagine it. I know none of us would be here if it were not for England ’s felons, so I must be grateful, but I doubt anyone there feels the same.’ Caroline nods. ‘I have read that some of the prisoners have only intractable opinions. Chartists, for one. And there are Canadians who re volted. Some of the Irish leaders, too.’ Mrs Swanston colours and stops. ‘But of course it is not my place to judge the law. Still, how will the world ever move forward if it is a criminal of fence to have an opinion?’ She looks so young, Caroline thinks, and yet she must be in her forties, with all these children: two sons establishing a she ep farm at Port Phillip Bay, the eldest in London studying, and her two daughters now both married. Caroline’ s attention is diverted by the sight of Nowell and Robert, the Swanston twins, fleeing down a ladder from an elaborate treehouse in the garden. They are being pursued by their younger brother, George, uttering a bloodcurdling cry, while Quill jumps from branch to branch until he lands perfectly on the ground, rolling, then rounding on the larger boys with a sword in the form of a stick, pinning them to the tree while George attempts to tie them to the trunk. ‘Your Quill is remarkably agile,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘The months we were at sea,’ says Caroline. ‘I could barely ke ep him out of the rigging. The crew did encourage him.’ ‘Perhaps he has a career ahead in the navy .’ George is marching back and forth giving the prisoners some kind of instruction, while Quill has climbed back up the tree to hoist a large piece
of sacking marked with a skull and crossbones. ‘Or as a pirate,’ Caroline says. They both smile, then Mrs Swanston says, ‘Mrs Douglas, I hope you will understand me when I say that I want my boys to seek out their own opinions. I would be happy for you to join me in that quest, if you are willing. Perhaps that is too much to ask until we know one another better. But when you are the fourth, fifth and sixth son, I believe it is essential.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘It matters a great deal to my husband and myself that when our boys arrive in London to further their education, they are equipped with the skills to forge their own way, and to hold their own in any company .’ Caroline had seen Mrs Swanston at St David’s Church each Sunday , her boys accompany ing her. Caroline had chosen the Anglican church for just this reason. Perhaps, unlike Caroline, Mrs Swanston went because she was devout. Or she might be fond of the teachings with which Caroline largely agreed. To love one another . To do unto others as one would have them do unto you. These seemed useful tenets for a peaceful society. It was not evident that the British government instilled such morality , but the Church was intrinsic to Her Majesty’ s reign and, in this outpost, not to appear each Sunday in the Church of England was to set oneself apart from a certain section of society , and to lose touch with one’ s neighbours. In Mrs Swansto n’s case, it also gave her an opportunity to speak with clients and colleagues of her husband. Captain Swanston was a much less frequent observer of the Sabbath, being often away on business, as she had heard Mrs Swanston say to other parishioners on several occasions. ‘I have a confess ion, Mrs Douglas,’ Mrs Swanston says, ‘and I hope you will not be offended. I have listened, from time to time, as you have given your lessons—with my ear at the door like a regular eavesdropper . I do hope you will forgive me. This colony is a colourful place. Few people are entirely as they seem, but please know that what I have heard has reassured me.’ ‘You are always welcome to join us in the classroom, Mrs Swanston.’ ‘Thank you, but that is not my point. The boys heed you. Even dear Robert, who has been in trouble again at school for failing.’ ‘I would not say Robert is not keen to learn,’ Caroline says. ‘As you know, he finds reading dif ficult and fears to make a mistake.’
‘I think his small hands have been the subject of harsh punishme nt at the school, a discipline I would never administer ,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘Although I do love the way that he writes. Nothing spelled correctly, but he writes the way a thing sounds.’ ‘And what he is expressing is often quite wonderful,’ says Caroline. ‘Perhaps Robert is born to be a sh epherd,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘It’s almost impossib le to get him to school on a clear morning, or a wet one. It makes no dif ference.’ ‘He benefits from the outdoor lessons. Thank you for agreeing to those. His study of birds is coming along with an accuracy he cannot bring to arithmetic.’ ‘Boys do seem to need to move,’ Mrs Swanston says. Her face has relaxed and her eyebrows are dancing. ‘And the autumn weather has been lovely. The light is so beautiful.’ And then she sighs and adds, ‘We are far from the industries of England here, but the industrialists will come. My sons cannot all be the gentlem en farmers of Melbourne that my husband imagines.’ ‘Well, I assure you they will have all I can impart, Mrs Swanston,’ says Caroline. ‘I guess this is the luck of the youngest,’ Mrs Swanston r eplies. ‘I tried all the rules and strictures on the older ones, but they grow into themselves regardless. Now, is there anything you need? How is the cottage? Do you have a piano?’ ‘No, but I have loved hearing you play,’ says Caroline. ‘Mozart and Bach drifting through the house while I am with the boys.’ ‘Yes,’ says Mrs Swanston. ‘They are great favourites of mine. Do you play yourself?’ ‘We both had lessons, my sister and I, but she had the af finity for it.’ ‘You must play here.’ ‘I think it might be best for everyone that I did not,’ Caroline says. Mrs Swanston laughs. ‘I heard you have been most industrious in your kitchen garden ...’ Caroline observes her . ‘Oh, I do apologise. I spoke with Bessie, but only to assure myself that she is well, and it is clear to me that she is.’ ‘I understand,’ says Caroline. Bessie returned to her room at the Swanstons’ at the end of each day, as part of convict regulations , a r eport on
life at the cottage might well be requested. Perhaps in time, when her sentence was done, that arrangement can be changed. ‘Please know that I consider it the worst of life here, the gossip,’ Mrs Swanston continues. ‘I assure you I admonish it in my servants, my children and my friends. The girl has been of concern to me, as you know. And of course we do live in this small valley, in this very small township. And people do love to find something to say about one another .’ ‘Mrs Swanston,’ Caroline says, ‘my father taught me that discretion was one of the noble sentiments. You may be confident that I will exercise it here with your boys in my role as tutor. And with anything else you care to share with me.’ ‘Thank you, Mrs Douglas. And I extend to you the same assurance. But may I call you Caroline? It is the name of both my sister and one of my daughters, and these formalitie s feel onerous when we must live in such daily proximity , don’t you feel? In return, I insist on you calling me Georgiana.’ Caroline is surprised by this kindness. ‘Oh, thank you, Mrs Swanston. Georgiana. And please, yes, call me Caroline,’ she says. ‘Well, then,’ says Georgiana, ‘that was all a little awkward, wasn’t it? But here we are. No damage done. Now tell me, how is it you are fluent in French?’ ‘Well ...’ says Caroline, and pauses. ‘My grandparents were French. We always spoke both French and English at home.’ ‘And your father , what were his interests?’ asks Geor giana. ‘He was a man who loved science, history and philosophy , and he taught me to love such things, too.’ ‘And he is no longer ... ?’ ‘No. Nor my mother or sister. Each from an illness within the space of two years.’ ‘I am so very sorry ,’ says Geor giana. ‘As am I,’ says Caroline. ‘And Quill’ s parents?’ ‘He is the son of my father’s cousin. Orphaned.’ And she is grateful when, at that moment, two maids arrive bearing trays of cake and lemon cordial followed by a pirate gang called in from the garden.
In London Caroline had lived with the death of all that had previously been hers. Truthfulness had been whipped out of her like a tooth pulled by string and a sharply shut door . She had taken her mother’s maiden name. ‘I had not expected to become a governess, of course,’ she had told her prospective employe r. ‘But with both my parents now gone, and our affairs not as they had seemed, I find I am in need of employment. Perhaps at least my education will prove useful.’ She became a governess to ten-year-old twin sisters seemingly born to lives of vanity and indifference. They required little of her intellect but much of her patience. She had a small bedroom below stairs with a wooden dresser, a narrow bed and a window that looked onto a basement wall. She wore dresses of grey wool or poplin. She wanted to be as invisible as light when fog swallowed it whole. This was what her dreams had come to. This was what her father had done. She missed the apothecary acutely. The quiet satisfaction she had found amongst the glass cabinets with their tins and jars, ointments and salves, herbs and tinctures. She missed their houseke eper , Esther, at home in the kitchen with pea and ham soup at the ready . It was all gone. She could hear her mother saying, ‘You are young, but one day you will want a family of your own. It could cause more harm than good, all this learning. Do not expect men to like it. Not everyone has the temperament of your father , Caroline. Far from it.’ And yet it was not the education her father insisted on that had caused her predicament. The brother of her employer had arrived from Amsterdam to stay a few days in the house. He was young and handsome with his hair worn long and his frock coats embroidered.
‘I came to visit my nieces,’ he said, entering the schoolroom, ‘but I hardly expected to find such a vision of loveliness.’ Caroline had blushed. She had not been without admirers over the years, but none had quite awakened her in the way this young man did with his confidence and wit. He sat with her and the girls on several mornings, enquiring into their lessons, wishing to see their work and to know Caroline’ s plans for their ongoing education. He had spoken to her in French and said that her accent was perfectly Parisian. How lucky his nieces were to have such an accomplished governess! One morning, after she had set the girls to work on their compositions, he asked her to walk him to the door. She did, and was startled to feel him push her ahead of him. He drew her across the hallway and into an empty guest room. She had thought it a game. Then, with his mouth pressed on hers, he began pulling at her skirts. She had tried to push him away but he was much too strong. He pinned her hands above her. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’ t pull away. His lips, his tongue, his body were all forcing her against the wall. Still she resisted, but he was lifting her skirts, reaching between her legs, pushing his hand into her most private parts. Hurting her. When he pulled back to undo the buttons of his flies, she swung away from him, biting the arm fixing her to the wall. She felt his flesh give and he wrenched away, slapping her face hard. The force knocked her to the floor. But it gave her a moment and somehow she got away from him, desperately flinging open the door . She ran down the hallway , descending to her room and locking it behind her. She had cried. Perhaps this behaviour was normal for girls in service. Had she encouraged him? She didn’t know. She had thought him wonderful. Now she was embarrassed and appalled by her naivety . After some minutes, she washed her face, the slap still smarting on her cheek. She smoothed her clothes and hair. After composing herself, she returned to the schoolroom, her heart galloping, but he was nowhere to be seen. That night she hardly sl ept for fear of him. The following day, she and the girls were breakfasting in the morning room when he arrived to farewell them. He rolled their curls in his fingers and kissed their cheeks until they giggled. Caroline’ s skin crawled. Then, as he was taking his leave, he came to her .
‘I do look forward to the next time, Mademoiselle Caroline. Meanwhile I have this to remember you by .’ He indicated a bandage beneath the lace of his sleeve. ‘ J’espèr e que cela laissera une cicatrice ,’ she said. He bowed and was gone. ‘I think he likes you,’ said one of the girls, and her sister giggled. Had this happened to Augusta? Or Tante Henriette? Surely Tante Henriette would never have let such a thing happen. But Augusta had been so young and would have been easily overpowered. Caroline wanted to rage then at her father for stealing their lives. She missed her mother acutely. She mourned Augusta. Tante Henriette was in Europe for the summer . She had no one to confide in. The cook in the house was irritable and the houseke eper was certain to r eport any story to the mistress, which would no doubt result in Caroline’ s employment being terminated. It had taken more than a little artifice to secure this work. She could not give notice and expect a reference without some plausible excuse. How had she let this happen? How had her life come to this? She mentioned the incident to no one. And then Tante Henriette came home.
‘We are leaving for the tropics,’ Caroline said to the saleswo man with a large bust and pince-nez. Caroline was looking and sounding like a young man in a winter frock coat and lace cravat. Did she know, when she engaged the woman at her aunt’s suggestion, what she was making possible? ‘Tell me, what is your recomme ndation to offset the perils of damp on a long voyage?’ she asked. ‘My uncle and I know little of such things and of course the servants will make good. But to line the trunks? Do you recommend straw or wool?’ Meanwhile, Tante Henriette, in the attire of a French gentleman, perused the cutlery, the little silver salt cellars. She picked up a cigar box then touched a silver napkin ring, set in a box with eleven companio ns patterned with shamrock. Was Caroline surprised when the French gentleman arrived at the counter with a list of items he wanted boxed up? The standing lamp, that Persian carpet there, and the silver pitcher and bowl because he could not take one and not the other . And those whisky glasses. Yes. Parfait . Then the French gentleman placed a card on the counter and the woman regarded it, and then she regarded him. ‘Of course, your lordship.’ A negotiation began which Caroline observed with interest. Tante Henriette was skilled and ruthless but the woman was wily. A price was at last agreed. ‘I will send a manservant to complete the purchases on Friday. I trust it will all be readied.’ ‘Of course, sir , I will see to it myself,’ said the woman. They laughed as they made their way along Broad Street. Manly laughter , but Caroline felt the delicious rush of duplicity . ‘You are a natural at this,’ said her aunt. ‘This?’ Caroline asked. Tante Henriette laughed again, a rich de ep laugh.
Tante Henriette guided them to a laneway behind her apartment and stopped at a weathered stable door. She produced a large key. The room they entered had riding tack hanging on the wall and two stalls filled with hay, but there were no horses nor a carriage . Instead, there were several trunks and wooden boxes stacked neatly to one side. Tante Henriette unlocked an interior door. Inside, she lit a lamp to reveal a room lined with empty shelves still bearing the prices from a haberdashery: 1 shilling , 2 shillings , £1, £ 2 , buttons 3 for a 1 p. The front door and windows were obscured by heavy drapes. In the centre of the room stood a long table once used for the rolling out and cutting of fabric. Now, a long length of white muslin was draped over it. When Tante Henriette drew back the muslin, she revealed silver teapots, silver ink pots and toothpick boxes, embossed cutlery, carving ware and beautiful silver cigar boxes. There were also gold snuffboxes, a gold pocket watch and several gold rings. Necklaces set with pearls and precious stones lay in velvet boxes. There were two Wedgwood tea sets. There were rolls of fabric. Tante Henriette smiled. She made a handsome man. She opened her leather satchel to reveal two silver salt cellars that Caroline had seen on display earlier that afternoon at the first shop they had visited. She also produced a gold brooch fashioned into a ladybird, its body studded with rubies. These new items were nestled within the display . ‘It is always something to let them go, to pass them on for a good price,’ she sighed. ‘But tonight all this will be gone.’ Her aunt had stolen all this? Caroline felt a flutter in her chest. The wigs and disguises—this was what dressing up was about? A subterfuge for theft? How had she not suspected? ‘Are you not frightened?’ she asked. ‘What I fear , dear niece, is poverty .’ Caroline remembered her mother’s face when another gift arrived from Tante Henriette for Augusta or herself. She thought of the specimen case of spiders for her sixteenth birthday. The bolts of fabric brought to her father’s shop. She had thought her aunt an opportunist, a woman with a clever eye for beauty and style, eager to benefit from a bargain. She had not imagined this. ‘If my father, your grandfather , had not been such an altruist,’ said Tante Henriette, ‘how different our lives might have been. But re volutions change
destinies, dear Caroline. I have found a way to make some small restoration. If you wish to join me, I will teach you. Have I been correct? Does it excite you?’ Caroline felt a chill travel across her skin. ‘One must have people who can procure, fetch, carry and disperse,’ says Henriette. ‘People who can make documents, cards, and forge currency. It is an enterprise I have been building for many years, and it has been very successful.’ Caroline contemplated. ‘How does it work?’ ‘A most unassuming manservan t will collect the items I put aside today,’ her aunt said. ‘He will present the same card I left with the assistant and the requisite payment. Counterfeit, you understand. But almost indiscernible, even to the most well-trained eye. He will disperse those items, and most of what you see here, to colleagues in Liverpool, Manchester and Edinbur gh. Some of it will go to Paris and further afield to other merchants. It is a web and I am the little spider at its centre. ‘And of course my employme nt as a lady’s companion continues to afford me entry into many homes,’ Henriette continued. ‘That was how it all began. There is an art to looking like a merry, wandering guest. My position has allowed me time to map the rooms of a house, observe servants, to learn the names one might utter at just the right moment if one is discovered. In such homes there are always things of beauty and extravagance. Of course it cannot happen then. I made that mistake early and I have never r epeated it. There must be a later incursion, planned and orchestrated. I have people who ke ep watch and observe patterns, the comings and goings of a house’s occupants, the habits of servants, the schedule for regular deliveries. Such information becomes very valuable.’ Her aunt regarded her. ‘Dear Caroline, all you had, and all you had hoped for, has been lost. Your dear mother is gone and your father has committed an unspeakable crime. He is as good as dead, though I know you do not want to believe it. But I will not desert you. True ind ependence is hard won for a woman, but this is how I am achieving it.’
Tante Henriette moved away from the trestle table and pulled back a curtain to reveal a hidden doorway . Beyond it a narrow stairway led upwards to another door that opened into her apartment. ‘I searched for some time to find such a situation, the shop and stables below, the apartment above,’ Tante Henriette says. ‘One must plan ahead. There must be more than one avenue of es cape.’ Caroline considered anew the contents of the apartment with its furnishings, books and ornaments. Tante Henriette went to a drawer and withdrew a pocketbook to show Caroline. The balance was a spectacular sum. ‘A woman cannot open a bank account,’ she said, ‘but as you know, being a man is not unpleasant. If you prove a good partner, we will open one for you. ‘But you must think about it,’ her aunt counselled, as she undid the pin of the cravat at her throat. ‘You must be able to sle ep at night. You must be able to laugh. If you decide it is not for you, then you must say so. Do not feel obligated. If the idea intrigues you, even thrills you, then you will become my apprentice. Your dear mother, of course, would be gravely disappointed. You may have to wrestle with that.’ ‘Do you not feel guilty?’ Her aunt, who was now peeling off the beard and moustache she had been wearing, smiled. ‘I will offer you twenty per cent of the profits while I am training you,’ said Tante Henriette. ‘After that, we shall see. Of course, you must ke ep your role of governess, as I ke ep my role of companion. A necessary artifice to remain invisible. But ensure you leave your current employment. You are looking far too thin. It clearly does not suit you. Find a family that needs you only for morning or afternoon lessons so that, should you choose, you are free to pursue your other interests.’
Caroline stood on the wall of the Thames, staring into its opaque d epths, and weighed Tante Henriette’ s words. She thought of the faraway places her father had spoken about. How two hundred sparrows had eaten from his hand on a balcony in Venice. He had seen shrines set into the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast and striped dolphins filling the Gulf of Corinth. If she remained a governess, she would have her meagre wages and a small trunk with a few possessi ons. She would move from house to house as children grew and flew, while she remained a winged but stunted thing, encumbered with failed promise s, wary of the world. Or she could become something entirely unexpected. It was too dangerous, surely. Yet Tante Henriette was obviously very successful. She had amassed enough to relocate to America, to France, to anywhere in the world. ‘Thirty per cent,’ Caroline countered, when her aunt opened the door to her apartment. She had not worked for years in the apothecary and learned nothing. ‘I see,’ said her aunt, ushering her inside. ‘Let us settle on twenty-five.’ And so it began.
It is first light and the birds of the forest are beginning to rouse. Caroline throws back the covers and is out of the cottage in nightgown and cloak. She breathes in forest and salt air. She thinks of her father holding the bark of cinnamon verum to her nose and telling her it was the scent of Ceylon. But this is the scent of here. The mint tang of eucalypts and the freshness of mountain air . She wonders if there is more to birdsong than simply to herald the day. Are there announcements when certain delicious beetles emerge from months of underground slumber on the mountain slopes, or flies muster over a pond? She suspects there are stories in those calls, if only she knew the language. She has begun to identify the different species by their pattern of flight and their particular calls. Currawong, wattlebird, cockatoo, magpie, rosella, robin, parrot, honeyeater , the large forest raven and the oystercatchers that walk the shore. She treads softly between the bushes that surround the pond behind the cottage and peers through the reeds. The frogs have abandoned their nocturnal melodies and she can see no evidence of them. No small wet bodies, bright eyes or throats moving. She removes her cloak, slips off her clogs and st eps into the water. Mud pushes up between her toes. The water is so cold it almost stings. She imagines Captain Swanston raising an eyebrow . For all his industry , his charming wife and elegant home, he is a reminder , the bank manager , that she must fit in, observe and comply . There must be no stories that reflect anything other than her modesty and propriety . He is someone she must not surprise. He has the ear of the Governor . Not that he wasn’t doing his best to oust the man and his wife. The previous governor , Georgiana had informed her, distrusted and disliked self-ma de men. ‘This new governor is similarly determined to ensure the island retains its fearsome r eputation. My husband has worked hard to avail himself of the many opportunities Van Diemen’ s Land offers,
but his initiativ es are often met with obtuseness and invidiousness from Government House down ...’ The water is up to Caroline’ s knees now. The chill of it grips her and she almost panics. The morning is so still it is as if breeze has yet to be invented. The trees wait. A few stars remain. When they had lived in Edinbur gh, she had yearned to be outdoors, even on the wildest days, loath to wear shoes, loath to submit to the tedium of the Sunday service. Her mother had been exasperated each time she threw off a clean pinafore or loosened the rags in her hair . ‘You’re a wild thing,’ she’d say. ‘You’ve got the Highlands in your bones.’ Caroline drags the nightdress over her head, tossing it back onto the bank, where it hangs awkwardly across reeds. She moves de eper into the pond, feeling the soft sediment between her toes. She gasps, pauses, and then lowers herself in, the water over her belly, rising up under her breasts, over her breasts, now up to her neck. She submer ges then surfaces quickly , brushing the water from her face. It has been years since she was a girl swimming in a Scottish loch. The water tastes sweet in her mouth. How would it be to sle ep in the forest? Not the cock crow to start a day, but a wild bird call. Eating wallaby , bird and fish trapped and caught by her. To cook not on a kitchen fire, but in a forest clearing. Her bare feet running on the soft litter of leaves, standing under a waterfall on the mountain slopes, wrapping herself in furs. She kicks and then she is paddling, arms and legs moving, her body deliciously weightless. She rolls over and floats on her back. Perhaps the gods of earth, sea and sky, the old gods of Troy and Atlantis, Babylonia and Egypt, had been sent here to continue their existence, to go on undisturbed by the presence of the new churches with their saints, seers, prophets, martyrs and zealots that followed through the centuries. Was this place at the end of the world the very birthplace of deities? The genesis of the original angels of earth and sky before they were dressed in robes and adorned with haloes, snakes, crowns or swords? Perhaps here I could make my own god, she thinks. For what can Homer’s gods or Shakespeare’ s woodland sprites or Milton’ s angels offer her amidst this unintimidated wild? Maybe a goddess would be more fitting. But if she chose a goddess, what goddess might it be? An Athena of sorts, a huntress mother. A goddess
for the forests, the grasses and wetlands. An Aphrodite? But what does she know of sensual love? Only that imparted in poetic myths and grand ballads. The tender way her father held her mother, his hands resting on her hips as he kissed her full on the lips. Yet Aphrodite is not only sensuality; she is a carrier of prayers, a bestower of gifts, the goddess of sea, earth and sky, of the morning and evening star . Was there some goddess of the lonely, the broken-hearted? A goddess for the mistakes of the past? A goddess who listened to all remorse and sin and rage, and held all these as tenderly as a mother might hold a dying child? A goddess who forgave, though not in the Catholic way where sin came with life; no Catholic Mary in all her elusive goodness and purity. Not a goddess who encouraged the faithful to judge, to subjugate, to punish and blame, to curse and torture one another . People who might once have put Caroline to the stake and burned her alive, just for being her own kind of woman. Caroline wanted a goddess who knew there was, at heart, an innocence that yearned to be reclaimed by all who had walked into their own being, and found there a dark and uncontainable power. Maybe she needed a bronze-skinned goddess tattooed with intricate patterns. Like the noblewomen who undressed within the private rooms of the apothecary , removing their finery to reveal the pale skin of their bodies adorned with flowers, birds, faces, animals, poems, symbols, religious icons and biblical images. ‘Is it not painful?’ she had asked one such lady, whose liveried coachman waited outside with a carriage and six black horses. ‘To have such things done to the skin?’ For the woman was a living painting from her shoulders to her toes. ‘This is how I claim myself,’ the woman had r eplied. If one needed coins to cross the Styx, what was required for passage beyond the land of the dead to a place of reinvention? A service of some kind? What might be enough for a goddess? Was it the care of Quill until he was grown to a man? Tante Henriette had offered her an occupation. Was this new life so different? Was it a sort of restitution, whatever it was she was striving for here? Caroline had been reckless taking on the boy, and now she and he were cast into a life neither had imagined. He had told her that his favourite place
to sle ep on the ship was in the manger where the goats lived, where the cows were tethered and the chooks roosted. She remembered her father telling her how the Hindoos acc epted that life was enormous and perplexing. If a person could be at peace with that, then one need not be consumed with the confusion that comes with trying to understand the workings of it. One simply chose a moral code to live by, that brought each day its rituals and rewards; that was enough for anyone. She smiles. I am beginning to understand now , Papa, she thinks. And then a dog barks and she knows someone is up. Soon there will be people about, a kettle to fill, her nightdress to dry on the line, the walk with Quill to school, the garden to tend, a lesson to pr epare. Then the afternoon will be upon her and the Swanston boys and Quill will be frowning over verb conjugatio ns and ancient history. Knowledge on paper, words and language, it would all burn and blow away in time. But this world, this place of mountain, hills, water , reflections, this will abide. Her feet slide in the mud as she pulls herself onto the pond’s edge. She dries herself quickly with her nightdress and wraps the cloak about her. The sky is magenta now, with a stripe of gold, an ecclesiastical sky in this pagan world. She walks to the old vineyard on her way back to the cottage and pushes against the wooden gate, squeezing through to confront the craze of vines clothed in the last of their gold and russet leaves woven through with weeds. She squats and searches in the grasses for the gnarled trunk of a vine, finding its rough texture, feeling its sure footing in the soil, and remembering a poem she spoke to the plants in the glasshouse in London. ... celestial Light, Shine inwar d, and the mind thr ough all her powers Irradiate, ther e plant eyes, all mist fr om thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. Oh, Papa, she thinks. Is it madness to contemplate such a dream?