The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

  “I should certainly hope it is,” Mrs. Wilson said.

  A few days later, when the cook was doing her daily rounds at the abattoir and the dairy shed and the henhouse, the new maid came into the kitchen again with a basket of linens. She lifted a black iron from a row of irons on a shelf and set it flat on the glowing coals of the fire. Then she fell into a chair. “Ah, me feet.” She sighed. “It’s too long a walk from there to here.”

  Mathinna was standing close to the hearth, warming her hands. “I thought they brought you in a cart.”

  “They’re making us walk now. Say it’s good for us. Bloody torturers.”

  Mathinna looked over at her. Hazel was as slight as a sapling, with wavy red hair pulled back under a white cap. Like the other convict maids, she wore a blue dress and white apron. “Have you been at the Cascades for long?”

  “Not really. This is my first outplacement.” She rose from the chair and wrapped a rag around her hand, then went to the fireplace and lifted the iron out of the coals. “What’s your story, then?”

  Mathinna shrugged.

  The maid licked her finger and touched the iron’s flat surface before carrying it to the ironing board and setting it on a trivet. “Where’re your real mum and dad?”

  “Dead.”

  “Both of ’em?”

  Mathinna nodded. “I have another father, though. He’s alive, I think. On Flinders.”

  “Where’s that?”

  She drew a line upward in the air with her finger. “A smaller island. Up north.”

  “Ah. That’s where you’re from?”

  “Yes. It’s a long way from here. I came on a boat.” Nobody had asked Mathinna these questions. Or any questions, really. Her answers felt strange in her mouth—they made her realize how little she’d told anyone about herself. How little most people wanted to know.

  “You’re alone then, aren’t ye?” the maid said. “I mean, there are plenty of people here”—she gestured vaguely around them—“but no one’s really looking out for ye.”

  “Well . . . Miss Eleanor.”

  “Really?”

  No, not really. Mathinna shook her head. She thought for a moment. “Sarah used to, I guess. But one day she stopped coming.”

  “From the Cascades?”

  Mathinna nodded.

  “Hmm. Dark curly hair?”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  The maid sighed. “Sarah Stoup. She’s in solitary. Caught drinking.”

  “Oh. Does she have to pick tar out of rope?”

  “How d’ye know about that?”

  “She said it’s a horrid job. A good reason not to murder someone.”

  “Well, she didn’t murder anybody. But they need that rope for the ships. They’ll use any excuse to make ye do it.” Plucking a napkin out of a basket at her feet, the maid said, “I could try to get a message to her, if ye want.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t really . . . know her.”

  The maid smoothed the napkin on the ironing board. “It’s hard being here. I’m from far away too. Across the ocean.”

  “Like Miss Eleanor,” Mathinna said, thinking of the globe in the schoolroom, that wide expanse of blue.

  She gave a dry laugh. “Miss Eleanor was on a different kind of ship.”

  Mathinna liked this maid Hazel. She was the first person she’d met in this place who talked to her like a real person. Nodding at the jumbled linens in the basket, she said, “I could help you fold those.”

  “Nah. It’s me job.”

  Mathinna sighed. “I’ve finished my schoolwork. There’s nothing else to do.”

  “I’ll get in trouble if I let ye.” Hazel pulled a pile of napkins out of the basket. “But . . . maybe later I could teach ye something. Like how to make a poultice. For if ye skin your knee.” She pointed at the bundled dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. “Ye start with mustard. Or rosemary. And grind it up with lard, maybe, or soft onions.”

  Mathinna gazed up at the hanging herbs. “How do you know how to do that?”

  “My mother taught me. A long time ago.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  Hazel’s face clouded. She turned back to the linens. “I wouldn’t know.”

  To celebrate the advent of spring, it was decided that the Franklins would host a dinner dance in the garden. In a short visit to the schoolroom, Lady Franklin announced that Mathinna’s studies would be suspended while Eleanor taught her to dance. “If she is to attend, she must learn to waltz, and do the Scotch reel, and the cotillion, and the quadrille,” she told Eleanor.

  “But we’re memorizing times tables,” Eleanor said. “She’s right in the middle of them.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Learning to dance will matter more to her social prospects than times tables, I assure you.”

  “You mean your social prospects,” Eleanor said under her breath.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing. What do you think, Mathinna? Would you like to learn to dance?”

  “I know how to dance,” Mathinna said.

  Eleanor and Lady Franklin looked at each other.

  “This is different,” Eleanor said.

  For the first few days, Eleanor sat with Mathinna at the table in the schoolroom, mapping steps on a chalkboard, with Xs for each participant and arrows designating where they should go. Then the two of them began practicing together in the yard behind the henhouse. Eleanor was too self-absorbed, not to mention intellectually incurious, to be a particularly inspiring schoolteacher. She plodded from subject to subject as if checking items off a list. But these same traits, as it turned out, made her an excellent dance instructor. Color rose to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled as her every step was admired and emulated. She looked so pretty as she turned! And as soon as she tired of one dance, she could move to another. She was playful and persistent, happy to spend hours demonstrating the moves.

  Out in the courtyard one sunny afternoon, Eleanor conscripted a stable boy, two convict maids, two idling buggy drivers, and the butcher to practice with them. Upon learning that the head butler, Mr. Grimm, had taken up the fiddle, she persuaded him to saw a jaunty tune. The air was mild and the atmosphere convivial, and it was thrilling to touch another person’s hand in public without fear of rebuke.

  To Mathinna, the dances, with their choreographed footwork, were as logical as mathematics: the careful fitting together of a sequence; a series of movements that, done in the correct order, produced the intended result. Once she mastered them, it was as if her body moved on its own. Soon enough she was helping Eleanor corral the other dancers into their proper places. She loved the pace of the songs that drove them forward: one–two–three–four, one–two–three . . . step-step-step-step, stepstepstep . . .

  “She will be ready in time, won’t she?” Lady Franklin asked Eleanor a week before the party.

  “She will. She’s learning.”

  “Her dancing must be a triumph, Eleanor. Otherwise, what’s the point of including her?”

  The big event was four days away, then three, then two. Mathinna watched as a crew of workers erected a large sailcloth tent in the side garden and laid the wooden dance floor. As soon as the tent was up, half a dozen convict maids were enlisted to decorate it, overseen by Lady Franklin, who did not so much as lift a teacup but could spy a misplaced chair or wobbly table leg at five hundred paces.

  The music played in Mathinna’s head on a continuous loop. In bed at night she moved her toes—one–two–three–four, one–two–three—and tapped her fingers to the rhythm. She danced instead of walked, held her head a little higher and fluttered her arms in the air as she went about her day. The household staff was friendlier to her than they’d ever been. They smiled when they saw her coming down the corridor, complimented her footwork, quizzed her about the differences between a waltz and quadrille.

  Only Mrs. Crain, passing through the courtyard as Mathinna practiced her steps, offered a critique. “Remember that
these are formal English dances, Mathinna,” she said with a frown. “You must control your native flourishes.”

  The scarlet dress still fit Mathinna around the waist, but it was too short, and the sleeves were tight.

  She stood on a stool in the center of the room while Hazel sat on the floor, pinning the skirt around her. “Bloody dark in here,” she muttered. “I can barely see what I’m doing.”

  Mathinna looked down at the part of Hazel’s russet hair, the smattering of freckles on her forearms. A round metal pendant around her neck glinted in the weak amber light. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  “What?” Hazel touched her throat. “Oh. I forget I have it on. Turn around, I need to pin the back. It belonged to a friend.”

  Looking over her shoulder at her, Mathinna said, “Why doesn’t your friend wear it?”

  Hazel was silent for a moment. Then she said, “She’s dead. This is all I’ve left of her. Well, except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “Oh . . . this and that. A handkerchief.” Pushing Mathinna gently off the stool, Hazel said, “We’re done. Let’s get it off ye and I’ll hem it before I leave.”

  As Hazel stood behind her, undoing the buttons, Mathinna said, “I used to wear a necklace that my mother made out of green shells, but Lady Jane took it.”

  “Ach. I’m sorry. Shall I steal it back for ye?”

  Mathinna shook her head. “You’ll end up in solitary like Sarah Stoup, and I’ll never see you again either.”

  Government House, Hobart Town, 1841

  The day of the dance was unseasonably humid. By late morning the golden wattle on the tables under the tent were drooping in their vases. By noon a hazy scrim enveloped the trees. Sir John was the one who’d decided the party should be held outdoors, Lady Franklin complained to whoever would listen. Easy for him to insist, since he had nothing to do with the planning! In the late afternoon she sent two convict maids into town to find paper fans—“Three dozen. No, four”—and directed Hazel to prepare a lavender bath in her chambers.

  At six o’clock, when the first guests arrived, the air was still thick with heat. Lady Franklin, consulting with the musicians and Mrs. Crain, decided to push back the time of the dancing until half eight, when surely it would be cooler.

  Sir John, sleek as a wombat in a form-fitting tuxedo, met Mathinna and Eleanor—wearing a custard-colored, scoop-neck taffeta gown that matched her hair—on the stone apron of Government House. “Don’t we all look smart! Lady Franklin insists that I dance with you, Mathinna. Are you ready to be the center of attention?”

  She was. All day she’d felt a flutter of anticipatory pleasure. Now her skin gleamed with rose balm and her hair was oiled and sleek, tied in velvet ribbons that matched the black ribbon around her waist. She wore new red stockings and spit-polished shoes. Her scarlet dress had been ironed with starch, and the full skirt swished around her legs.

  “I can’t imagine she’ll embarrass you, Papa, as long as she remembers the steps,” Eleanor said.

  “My only worry is that I may embarrass her,” Sir John replied with a gallant flourish. “Frankly, I’d thought my cotillion days were behind me.”

  Offering his elbows, he escorted them to the tent, where Eleanor joined a gaggle of young ladies in sherbet dresses and Mathinna and Sir John were quickly surrounded by a throng. Some of the partygoers were familiar to Mathinna, but many were strangers. She greeted the people she recognized with a smile and tried to ignore the ones staring at her, mouths ajar.

  A dowager with cake-icing hair tottered over. “I heard you acquired a savage, Sir John, but I hardly believed it. And here it is—in a ball gown!”

  A dozen heads pivoted toward Mathinna like a school of fish toward a heel of bread. Feeling herself flush, she took a deep breath and looked at Sir John. He gave her a wink, as if to say that the woman’s rudeness was merely part of the game.

  “It is a she, Mrs. Carlisle,” he corrected the dowager, “and she is called Mathinna.”

  “Does it—she—understand us?”

  “Indeed. In fact, I would say that she probably comprehends far more than she lets on. Isn’t that so, Mathinna?”

  She knew what Sir John was asking her to do. He wanted her to astonish them. With a regal nod, she said, “Vous serez surpris de voir combien je sais.”

  Gasps and a smattering of claps.

  “Extraordinary!”

  “What did she say?” Not everyone spoke French, of course.

  “I believe it was, ‘You’d be surprised how much I know,’” said Sir John, looking around with a self-satisfied grin. “She’s cheeky, this one.”

  “Charming,” the dowager said. “Where did you find her, exactly?”

  “Well, it’s quite a story,” Sir John said. “On a trip to Flinders Island we spotted her cavorting around a campfire, with no shoes and barely any clothes. A pure primitive.”

  “Fascinating. And here she is, in a satin dress!”

  “I can’t help showing her off. Say a few more words in French, Mathinna,” Sir John said.

  Say a few more words in French, Mathinna. All right, then, she would. “Bientôt je te danserai sous la table.”

  Sir John wagged his finger. “No doubt you will dance me under the table, my dear. She has been practicing, and I have not!”

  “She appears quite comfortable with you,” a woman mused.

  He inclined his head in agreement. “Natives are surprisingly capable of forming attachments.”

  “I must say, I am impressed,” the dowager said. “To have rescued this savage from a life of primeval ignorance—and to have given her an appreciation of art and culture—is a tremendous accomplishment. Almost as great, perhaps, as conquering the Arctic.”

  “And nowhere near as dangerous,” Sir John said.

  The dowager arched an eyebrow. “That remains to be seen.”

  When Sir John was distracted by a pile of cakes, Mathinna slipped away and wandered through the crowd. Someone handed her a small goblet filled with a golden liquid, and she took it with her as she made her way toward the far corner of the tent, near the dance floor, where the musicians were setting up their instruments: a small piano, an accordion, a fiddle, a harp, a wide shallow drum. Watching them warm up, chatting among themselves with easy familiarity, she felt an aching loneliness.

  As she took a sip from the glass, her throat filled with molten fire. After a moment the heat subsided, leaving a sweet, warm taste in her mouth. She took another sip. Then drained the glass.

  “Are you ready, ma fille?” Sir John said, bowing to the ground in a showy display of formality. Lightly he took Mathinna’s hand in his white-gloved one for the Grand March. Partygoers began flocking to the dance floor two by two, falling in line behind Sir John and Mathinna like Noah’s animals as they circled the large wooden dance floor, the ladies as colorful and fragrant as freesia, the men as sleekly tailored as pigeons.

  Mathinna put her shoulders back and her chin up. Here she was, the girl in the portrait in her red satin dress.

  The first dance was a quadrille, one of her favorites. Following Sir John’s lead, she executed each move fluidly, her footwork light and precise as she glided around the floor. One–two–three–four, one–two–three, step-step-step-step, stepstepstep. But the joy she’d felt in mastering the dance was gone. At the round tables just beyond the perimeter, people chattered behind their fans, exclaiming and pointing, but she ignored them. (She was two-dimensional, after all. Impervious to stares and whispers.) Circling her, Sir John whispered, “You are making quite an impression, my dear. You know that, don’t you? Twirl! Show them what a lady you’ve become.”

  Taking small steps in time to the music, the girl in the portrait turned, the scarlet skirt billowing around her. As she and the three other ladies in her group came together in the middle, it meant nothing to her that two of them only pretended to touch her hands.

  Between dances—as was the custom—accompanied by a jau
nty piano tune, Sir John and Mathinna made a show of visiting the other dancers, pantomiming conversation and laughter. She widened her eyes and stuck her chin even higher in the air, imitating Lady Franklin’s obsequiousness when dignitaries from London came to stay. Sir John, who seemed to recognize the mimicry, observed her with bemused delight.

  After a few dances, his face became alarmingly flushed. He kept blotting his forehead with a handkerchief, attempting to stanch the sweat that trickled down his neck, dampening his collar. Eleanor, dancing beside them, looked concerned. At the end of a quadrille, she took her father’s hand. “Let’s rest, shall we?”

  “I’m fine, daughter dear!” he protested as she guided him to an empty table. “I don’t want to foil your chances with that eligible bachelor.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Dr. Dunne may be handsome, but he’s a bit of a bore. He keeps going on about convicts’ rights.”

  “Then, by all means, use me as an excuse to evade him.” Sir John sank into a chair. “Tell your mother you forced me off the dance floor.”

  “Stepmother. And she should thank me,” Eleanor said tartly. “At least someone is looking out for you.”

  Mathinna, partnerless now, stood beside a wooden tent pole watching Noah’s animals line up for the Scotch reel. Spying another goblet of that golden liquid on a silver tray, she took a sip, then swallowed it quickly, feeling the heat slide down her throat all the way to her stomach.

  The music began with a merry fiddle. The women turned, their skirts flouncing up as they circled their partners. As the tune grew louder and more insistent, the women clapped in time to the fiddle while the men hopped in the air, snapping white-gloved fingers. Watching the pale-skinned, pastel-hued partygoers from a distance, Mathinna saw something clearly for the first time, as if through a lifting fog. Yes, she could pose as the girl in the portrait, wearing a pretty satin dress and ribbons in her hair; she could master the steps to the quadrille and the cotillion and the Scotch reel; she could speak English and French and curtsy like a princess. But none of it would be enough. She could never be one of them, even if she wanted to. She would never belong in this place.