After changing into her nightshirt in the dark, Hazel pulled the white handkerchief from the pocket of her apron and unfolded it. She tied the red cord around her neck and tucked the tin ticket under her nightshirt, tracing the number with her finger: 171. If she couldn’t be with Ruby at night, she would at least wear Evangeline’s ticket. How strange that this visual marker of their incarceration had come to feel like something else: a memento. A talisman.
The Cascades, 1840–1841
Roused from sleep by the clanging of a bell, the women dressed hurriedly in the dark and lined up in the chilly kitchen yard for gruel before sitting through another interminable sermon. By the time they emerged from the chapel, a queue of free settlers was filing in to the first yard to choose convicts for assignment. Hazel joined the group of new mothers and wet nurses waiting by the gate to walk to the nursery. It was on Liverpool Street, they were told, near the wharf.
Accompanied by a guard, the women reversed their trip of the day before, passing the high stone wall of the Cascades before turning left across the bridge over the stinking tributary and up the incline of Macquarie Street. Fog hung thickly over the top of the mountain above them, a false ceiling for an enclosed world.
Green lizards darted across the road in quick bursts. Royal blue birds swooped among the trees. As they tramped along in silence, Hazel marveled at the beauty of this new world: the flowering purple shrubs, the golden grass by the side of the road shiny with dew, the feathery gray scrub. She thought of her neighborhood in Glasgow, where she’d had to tread carefully along streets coated with a paste of coal particles and manure and stay alert to avoid rubbish thrown from windows. The cramped room she lived in with her mother, with its single clouded window that let in no air and little light, the dirt floor that turned to mud when it rained. The water in the River Clyde that was so lethal that most people, young and old, drank beer instead. How children as young as six worked in factories and mines and were sent out to steal for their parents, as Hazel had done.
Even so, her life in Glasgow wasn’t all anguish and despair. There was plenty she missed. She’d loved navigating the wynds, the winding cobblestone streets that led to the shops in the West End filled with colorful scarves, leather gloves, bolts of shiny fabric. She’d loved picking at the flaky crust of a Scotch pie and feeling it melt on her tongue. Tatties and neeps and haggis, the rare treat of a trifle. The buttery sweetness of shortbread. Drinking chamomile tea laced with honey at the kitchen table on winter evenings, blowing into the steam to cool it. Her mother, she remembered, would put apples in an earthen jar with a sprinkle of cloves, a bit of sugar, some lemon peel, and a splash of red wine. After an hour in the fireplace it became a delicious mash that they ate straight from the jar with spoons.
Hazel felt a surprising surge of longing for her mother—and then, just as quickly, a spike of anger. She was here, in this terrible place, because of her. Hazel didn’t think she could ever forgive her mother for that.
The building that housed the nursery was dilapidated. Inside, the air reeked of vomit and diarrhea. Hazel made her way through a warren of tiny rooms, searching for Ruby. Infants lay three or four to a crib on soiled, flea-ridden bedding. Those old enough to crawl and walk peered out at her silently, like puppies in cages.
“Why are they so quiet?” she asked a guard.
He shrugged. “A lot are sickly. Some of them older ones were never taught to talk.”
When Hazel found Ruby, in an upstairs crib, she, too, was unusually quiet. Hazel scooped her up and took her to the changing room. Her waste was a brackish green.
There were no doctors on the premises. No medicines or other supplies. Not even enough linens for bedding and cloths. All Hazel could do was hold the baby, so she did. Every now and then, Ruby whimpered. Hazel knew she was hungry, but no wet nurse was available. She would have to wait.
After about an hour, an exhausted-looking woman appeared in front of Hazel and took Ruby from her. Without a word, she swung her expertly under her arm and latched her on.
“Ye know what you’re doing,” Hazel said.
“I’ve had practice.”
“How many babies do you feed?”
“Four, at the moment. Used to be five, but . . .” An expression flitted across her face. “They don’t all make it.”
Hazel nodded, her breath catching in her throat. “It must be . . . hard, sometimes.”
The woman shrugged. “Ye get used to it. When my own wee bairn died, they gave me a choice. I could go to the crime yard for six months and wring laundry. Or I could do this.”
After a few minutes, she pulled away and started buttoning her dress. Ruby twisted her head from side to side, opening and closing her mouth.
“She’s still hungry,” Hazel said.
“Sorry. This cow is dry.”
At the end of the day, Hazel loitered by Ruby’s crib, her throat closing up, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Please—let me stay with her. And help the others too,” she begged the guard.
“You’ll be reported missing and add years to your sentence, is that what ye want?”
All night, on her hammock, Hazel tossed and turned. The next morning, she was the first one up the hill, the first in the door at the nursery. Ruby was all right, but another infant in her crib, a boy, had died in the night.
“Where’s his mother?” Hazel asked the guard when the body was taken away.
“A lot of ’em never show up,” he said. “They prefer to serve their time in the crime yard and move on. Can’t say I blame ’em.”
Even many of the ones who did show up, Hazel noticed, were listless, blank-eyed and gray-faced, turned in on themselves. Some barely looked at their babies.
The boy who died would be buried in a children’s cemetery at the corner of Harrington and Davey Streets, the guard told Hazel, in a gumwood crate. They’d wait until the end of the day, in case there were more.
That evening Hazel found Olive in the main courtyard with Liza, the crooked accountant, and some newfound friends. “Can we talk?”
“What d’ye need?”
Hazel got straight to the point. “Ye have to feed her, Olive.”
“I told ye, I don’t want to nurse six piglets.”
“Ye can tell the doctor ye only have enough milk for one.”
She shook her head. “I heard it’s disgusting over there.”
“Ruby’ll die if ye don’t.”
“You’re a regular Chicken Little, aren’t ye, Hazel?” Olive shook her arms in the air in mock panic.
The women around her laughed.
“I’m begging ye,” Hazel said, ignoring them. She took a breath. “Think of Evangeline.” It was shameless to evoke their dead friend’s name, she knew. But Hazel had no shame. “Babies die every day in that place, and they’re dumped in a mass grave to rot. They’re not even given a proper funeral.”
Olive gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, rolling her eyes.
But the next morning, and each morning after that, when Hazel showed up in the courtyard, there Olive was, waiting with the other wet nurses and new mothers to walk to the nursery.
One day, walking beside Olive up Macquarie Street, Hazel spied a clump of sage by the side of the road and hurried over from her place in the line to pluck some leaves. As she was twining the leaves together and tucking them into her apron pocket, the convict behind her asked, “What’re ye doing with that?”
Hazel turned around. It was the woman with the white braid she’d seen in the courtyard when they arrived. “I’ll make a poultice,” she said. “For rash.”
“Ye know your milk is good for that,” the woman said.
Hazel glanced at Olive, who snorted. “I suppose I’m a walking miracle cure.”
This old woman was not a new mother or a wet nurse. “Are ye a midwife?” Hazel asked.
“I am. You?”
Hazel nodded.
“Working in the nursery isn�
��t much of a prize for anyone, but I thought I could be of use. Most convicts in the birthing rooms and the nursery have no experience. I do.”
Her name was Maeve, she said. Maeve Logan. She hailed from a landlocked part of Ireland called Roscommon. She’d always been outspoken, mouthy with complaint; some even accused her of being a witch, and maybe she was. Her landlord had died a day after she cursed him for starving his tenants. Though there was no evidence she had anything to do with it, she was charged with insurrection. Seven years. She’d been on Van Diemen’s Land for four.
Over the next few weeks, while Olive was with Ruby, Hazel began working with Maeve to improve conditions at the nursery. They boiled water to wash the linens and took them outside to scrub. They mopped the floors. To reduce fever, they bathed babies in water with lemon; for hives, they made a tea out of catnip. Maeve taught Hazel to identify local plants and showed her how to use them: Bark from the black peppermint tree could be brewed into tea for fevers and headaches. Sap from the white gum was good for burns. Juice from the hop bush plant soothed toothaches. Nectar from leatherwood flowers treated infections and other wounds.
Some of the native plants were dangerous—and dangerously tempting. In small quantities they produced a pleasant sensation, but if misused they caused hallucinations, or even death: yellow oil from the sassafras tree, the combination of ingredients that made up absinthe—wormwood, hyssop, anise seed, and fennel, marinated in brandy. Maeve pointed out a bush along the side of the road with fluted pale pink flowers hanging upside down. “Angel’s trumpet. Beautiful, in’it? Eating these flowers makes your troubles go away. Problem is, too much will kill ye.” She laughed. “It got its name because it’s the last thing you’ll see before ascending into heaven.”
Life at the Cascades, Hazel learned, was all about waiting in line. The women queued for their daily pound of bread and pint of gruel for breakfast, their pint of mutton soup at midday, and their oxtail soup thickened with old vegetables for supper. They queued for chapel and queued for assignment. At Sunday muster, they queued in the second yard, facing the wall, to be roughly searched for contraband.
The prison had been built for 250 women and now held more than 450. There were only eight staff members, which meant both that the convicts got away with a lot and that they were punished severely if caught. Convicts smuggled in rum and wine traded for favors while on assignment. They buried tobacco and pipes, tea and biscuits beside the washtubs and behind bricks in the yard. The weaker prisoners—those who were small or sick, or had lost a child, or were depressed, or not right in the head—were overpowered by the strong, who stole their rations and anything else they could get their hands on. On the ship, as unpleasant as it was, convicts had only been punished if they caused a fight or disruption. Here, you could be thrown into the crime yard for the flimsiest of reasons: for picking up a heel of bread that had been tossed over the fence, for singing or bartering, for getting caught with rum.
A few of them escaped—or at least there were rumors. Two women supposedly used sharpened spoons to tunnel out of solitary. Another, it was said, tore her blanket into strips and knotted them to make a rope to scale the stone wall. But most women didn’t risk it. They served their time quietly, hoping to gain their freedom before they were too old or sick to enjoy it.
One Sunday at muster the superintendent announced that an expansion was going to be built, a second crime yard with more than a hundred new cells, in two rows of double-tiered cellblocks. Two days later a work crew arrived, made up of male convicts from prisons all over the island. With men regularly in the factory now, the women had access to gin, rum, tea, and sugar, which they exchanged for favors and fresh bread baked in the cookhouse.
Olive took up with an unruly group of convicts who called themselves the Flash Mob. These women smuggled in grog, tobacco, tea, and sugar in coal bins or tied to brooms tossed over the walls. They paraded about in contraband silk scarves and pantaloons; they swore openly and drank until they were senseless. Defying the superintendent’s orders, they sang bawdy songs in the full-throated voices of men and called to each other across the courtyard. They ridiculed the chaplain, jeering and gesturing as he passed: “Hey, Holy Willie, want some of this?” They got away with more than they were nabbed for, but even so, many of them drifted in and out of the crime yard, shrugging it off as a small price to pay for their revelry.
Olive and Liza, the crooked accountant from the ship, had become inseparable. They emboldened each other. Olive altered her uniform, trimming and tying and hemming it to show more cleavage and leg. Liza painted her lips with berry juice and rimmed her eyes with charcoal. They nuzzled each other’s necks in the courtyard and pinched each other’s backsides when the guards’ backs were turned. By bribing a susceptible guard, they even managed to sleep together in the same bed.
One afternoon, when several dozen members of the Flash Mob were singing and dancing loudly in yard one, the matron arrived, flush-faced, to see what the commotion was about.
“Who is the ringleader?” she demanded.
Usually the Flash Mob fell silent when the matron showed up, but this time they did not. They squatted on the floor, hooting and stamping their feet, chanting, “We are all alike, we are all alike, we are all alike.”
“This is your chance to declare that you are not a member of a mob,” Mrs. Hutchinson shouted. “Every one of you risks severe punishment!”
The women yelled and clapped and clacked their tongues.
In the chaos of the moment, Olive managed to slip out of sight. But nine convicts were sentenced to the crime yard for six months, with a month in solitary after that, and two of the instigators had years added to their time.
Hazel watched from a distance. She wasn’t interested in getting away with anything. Her only goal was to earn her ticket of leave as early as she could for good behavior, like some women did, and make a new life for herself and Ruby, somewhere safe and free.
At the height of summer, the sun was so hot that it burned the tips of the leaves on the trees and baked the dirt on Macquarie Street until it cracked. But deep in the valley, inside the high stone walls of the prison, it was gloomy and damp. The stone floors were often soupy and slick. When the rivulet overflowed, the entire place was ankle-deep in foul water. It was a relief to leave the premises each day, to walk to the nursery past picturesque cottages with neat picket fences and hills wheaten in the distance, dotted with sheep.
Over the weeks and months, the faces of the women walking to the nursery changed, but the numbers stayed roughly the same. New mothers joined the line; those whose babies were six months old were sent to serve their time in the crime yard. When Ruby turned six months old she was forcibly weaned, and Olive was discharged. Hazel was only allowed to stay in the nursery because of her skills in the delivery room and treating sickly infants. Knowing that the eyes of the overseer were always on her, she was careful to make the rounds, to hold and change the other children, but her heart kept tugging her back to Ruby as if tied to the baby by a string.
“What makes ye so special?” a loud, coarse woman in the hammock beside her said one night, back at the Cascades. “We’re working our fingers to the bone, and ye get to sing to babies.”
Hazel didn’t answer. She’d never cared what people thought of her—it was one of the few benefits of having been underestimated for her entire life. Ever since she was old enough to know anything, she’d been preoccupied with survival. That was all. Just trying to stay alive. And now keeping Ruby alive. Nothing else mattered.
Hobart Town, 1841
One morning, when Hazel arrived at the nursery, Ruby was gone. She’d been taken to the Queen’s Orphan School in New Town, the guard said, four miles away.
“But I received no notice,” Hazel sputtered. “She’s only nine months old!”
He shrugged. “The nursery’s overcrowded, and another ship is arriving in a few days. Ye can visit ’er at the end of the week.”
Every minute Haze
l spent at the nursery reminded her that Ruby was alone. Worry lived inside her like a parasite, gnawing at her as she went about her days and causing her to wake, gasping, in her hammock at night. Ruby, Ruby . . . four miles away, in the hands of strangers. Her big brown eyes. Her high hairline and curly brown hair. Old enough to smile when she saw Hazel and pat her cheeks with her hands, but not old enough to know why she was alone, and what she’d done to deserve her exile.
Hazel could hardly hold another baby without crying. Before the week was out, she had requested a new assignment.
That Sunday Hazel stood with nearly two dozen convicts at the front gate of the Cascades to make the slow trek on foot to the orphanage. Some brought small gifts, toys and trinkets they’d bartered for or fashioned out of scraps, or clothing they’d sewn, but Hazel brought nothing. She hadn’t known that she could.
The soft light of late morning washed over Mount Wellington. The air was cool and mild. Making their slow way to New Town, the women passed apple orchards, yellow marigolds, fields of wheat. Though it was a beautiful day, Hazel barely noticed. Her stomach was twisted in knots. All she could think about was Ruby.
They tramped up an incline. The large parish church flanked by two low buildings looked welcoming, with its pretty sandstone turrets and arches. But inside the rectory it was dark and austere.
One by one, the children were brought to their waiting mothers.
“Ma-ma,” Ruby said, choking on the word. Her nose was crusted, and she had dark bruises on her arms and scabs on her knees.
The Exiles Page 17
