“Originally? Mathinna was her Aboriginal name. She was christened Leda by missionaries. We decided on something less . . . fanciful,” Robinson said.
Mathinna didn’t remember being called Leda, but her mother had hated the name Mary, so the Palawa refused to use it. Only the British called her Mary.
“Well, I think she’s charming,” Lady Franklin said. “I’d like to keep her.”
Keep her? Mathinna tried to catch Robinson’s eye, but he didn’t return her gaze.
Sir John looked amused. “You want to take her home with us? After what happened with the last one?”
“This will be different. Timeo was . . .” Lady Franklin shook her head. “The girl is an orphan, you said?” she asked, turning to Robinson.
“Yes. Her father was a chieftain. Her mother remarried, but recently died.”
“Does that make her a princess?”
He smiled slightly. “Of a sort, perhaps.”
“Hmm. What do you think, Sir John?”
Sir John smiled beneficently. “If you wish to amuse yourself in such a fashion, my dear, I suppose there’s no harm in it.”
“I think it will be entertaining.”
“And if it isn’t, we can always send her back.”
Mathinna did not want to leave the island with these foolish people. She did not want to say goodbye to her stepfather and the other elders. She did not want to go to a strange new place where nobody knew or cared about her. Tugging on Robinson’s hand, she whispered, “Please, sir. I don’t—”
Slipping his hand from her grasp, he turned to the Franklins. “We will make the necessary arrangements.”
“Very well.” Lady Franklin cocked her head, appraising her. “Mathinna. I’d prefer to call her that. It will be more of a surprise if she achieves the manners of a lady.”
Later, when the governor’s party was distracted, Mathinna slipped behind the brick houses where everyone was gathered, still wearing the ceremonial wallaby-skin cape her father gave her before he died and a necklace of tiny green shells made by her mother. Wending her way through wallaby grass, silky against her shins, she listened to the barking dogs and the currawongs, plump black birds that warbled and flapped their wings when rain was on the way. She breathed in the familiar scent of eucalyptus. As she slid into the bush at the edge of the clearing, she looked up to see a geyser of muttonbirds erupt into the sky.
Evangeline
I never know an instance of any female convict coming out that I would consider a fair character. Their open and shameless vice must be told. Their fierce and untamable audacity would not be believed. They are the pest and gangrene of the colonial society—a reproach to human nature—and lower than the brutes, a disgrace to all animal existence.
—James Mudie, The Felonry of New South Wales: Being a Faithful Picture of the Real Romance of Life in Botany Bay, 1837
St. John’s Wood, London, 1840
From within the depths of a restless dream, Evangeline heard a knocking. She opened her eyes. Silence. Then, more insistent: rapraprap.
Thin light from the small window high above her bed cut across the floor. She felt a surge of panic: she must have slept through the morning bell.
She never slept through the morning bell.
Sitting up, she felt woozy. She leaned back against her pillow. “Just a minute.” Her mouth filled with saliva and she swallowed it.
“The children are waiting!” The scullery maid’s voice rang with indignation.
“What time is it, Agnes?”
“Half nine!”
Sitting up again, Evangeline pushed back the covers. Bile rose in her throat, and this time she couldn’t keep it down; she leaned over and vomited on the pine floor.
The knob turned and the door swung open. She looked up helplessly as Agnes twitched her nose and frowned at the viscous yellow splatter at her feet. “Give me a minute. Please.” Evangeline wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
Agnes didn’t move. “Did ye eat something strange?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Feverish?”
Evangeline pressed her hand against her forehead. Cool and clammy. She shook her head.
“Been feeling poorly?”
“Not until this morning.”
“Hmm.” Agnes pursed her lips.
“I’m all right, I’m just—” Evangeline felt a roiling in her gut. She swallowed hard.
“Clearly you’re not. I’ll inform Mrs. Whitstone there’ll be no lessons today.” With a curt nod, Agnes turned to leave, then paused, narrowing her eyes in the direction of the chest of drawers.
Evangeline followed her gaze. On the top, beside an oval mirror, a ruby gemstone ring glowed in the sunlight, staining the white handkerchief it lay on a deep red.
Her heart clenched. She’d been admiring the ring by the light of a candle the night before and had stupidly forgotten to put it away.
“Where’d ye get that?” Agnes asked.
“It was . . . a gift.”
“Who from?”
“A family member.”
“Your family?” Agnes knew full well that Evangeline had no family. She’d only applied to be a governess because she had nowhere else to turn.
“It was . . . an heirloom.”
“I’ve never seen ye wear it.”
Evangeline put her feet on the floor. “For goodness’ sake. I don’t have much occasion, do I?” she said, attempting to sound brusque. “Now, will you leave me be? I’m perfectly fine. I’ll meet the children in the library in a quarter of an hour.”
Agnes gave her a steady look. Then she left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Later Evangeline would replay this moment in her head a dozen ways—what she might have said or done to throw Agnes off the trail. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Agnes had never liked her. Only a few years older than Evangeline, she’d been in service to the Whitstones for nearly a decade and lorded her institutional knowledge over Evangeline with supercilious condescension. She was always chiding her for not knowing the rules or grasping how things worked. When Evangeline confided in the assistant butler, her one ally in the household, that she didn’t understand Agnes’s palpable contempt, he shook his head. “Come now. Don’t be naive. Until you arrived, she was the only eligible lass in the place. Now you’re the one drawing all the attention—including from the young master himself. Who used to flirt with Agnes, or so she believed. And on top of that, your job is soft.”
“It isn’t!”
“It’s not like hers, though, is it? Scrubbing linens with lye and emptying chamber pots from dawn till dusk. You’re paid for your brains, not your back. No surprise she’s tetchy.”
Evangeline rose from her bed, and, carefully stepping around the puddle, went to the chest of drawers. Picking up the ruby ring, she held it to the window, noting with dismay how it caught and refracted the light. She glanced around the room. Where could she hide it? Under the mattress? Inside her pillowcase? Opening the bottom drawer, she slipped the ring into the pocket of an old dress tucked beneath some newer ones.