The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

  Well, maybe she didn’t want to belong.

  Her head felt fuzzy, as if she’d been spinning in a circle and stopped to catch her breath.

  Slowly, slowly, she began to sway from side to side. She felt the music seep through her soles, the percussive snap of the fiddle like the beat of a drum. Her feet moved lightly under her dress, her small steps mimicking the dancers’ exaggerated ones. She felt the rhythm inside her gathering force, rising from her toes to her thighs to her gut to her shoulders and up through her arms to the tips of her fingers. Closing her eyes, she felt the warmth of a long-ago campfire on her legs, saw the orange glow of it through her lids. Heard Palle brush his hand across a drum skin and begin to shush out the rhythm as the Palawa elders chanted to the tempo and a spray of muttonbirds rose into the sky.

  Moving faster now, Mathinna arched her back, responding to the music with her entire body. She remembered things she thought she had forgotten: Droemerdene leaping and turning through the night sky, Moinee dancing across the land, down toward the ground and up to the stars, rocking and swaying, hunching and whirling. An ecstasy of movement, an obliteration of sadness. A celebration of life, hers and all of theirs: her mother’s, her father’s, Palle’s, Waluka’s, those of the elders she didn’t remember and the sister she’d never met . . .

  The music dwindled, then stopped.

  Mathinna opened her eyes.

  The entire party, it seemed, was staring at her. As her senses sharpened, she heard the tinkle of silver on china. A shrill laugh. Ladies huddled in groups, whispering behind fans. Eleanor stood alone, her face a rictus of disbelief.

  Mathinna smelled rose water, and under it the tang of vinegar. The strong perfume of the golden wattle. The raisiny whiff of liquor on her own breath.

  Lady Franklin was marching toward her, a smile frozen on her face, spots of red high on her cheeks, like a painted doll. Coming to a halt, she leaned down and hissed, “What—on earth—was that?”

  Mathinna looked into her eyes. “I was dancing.”

  “Are you trying to humiliate us?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You are clearly intoxicated. And have . . . I don’t know”—Lady Franklin was so close that Mathinna could feel her vibrating with rage—“reverted to your natural savage state.”

  “Perhaps, my dear,” Sir John said, coming up behind his wife, “it’s best to let the wretched girl be.”

  Mathinna looked at Lady Franklin, with her wattlebird neck and red-rimmed eyes, and Sir John, moist and disheveled in his too-tight tuxedo. The two of them seemed like strangers to her, both terrifying and grotesque. She blinked swiftly to keep from crying. “Peut-être,” she said.

  Lady Franklin sighed. She raised her fan, motioning for Mrs. Crain. “Tell the band to begin again, and take this girl to her room,” she told the scowling housekeeper. “The sooner we forget this unfortunate incident, the better.”

  Government House, Hobart Town, 1841–1842

  But nobody forgot.

  Almost imperceptibly, at first, things were different. The next morning Sir John did not summon Mathinna for his morning constitutional. From the schoolroom window, she watched him stroll through the gardens, his hands behind his back and head down, Eleanor by his side.

  The tea-drinking ladies came and went; Mathinna was not asked to join them in the parlor. Eleanor left for a six-week trip to Sydney without saying goodbye.

  Mrs. Crain informed Mathinna that from now on, especially with Eleanor away, she would no longer be served breakfast in the nursery but would instead take all her meals in the kitchen outbuilding with the cook.

  “I hear ye caused quite a scandal,” Mrs. Wilson said to Mathinna as she ladled cooked oats into a bowl. “Dancing like a primitive, were ye?” She looked around to be sure no one else was listening, then whispered, “Well, I think it’s grand. They thought they’d mold ye in their likeness, didn’t they, with a few French lessons and some fancy petticoats. But ye are who ye are. They can build their fancy houses and import their china teacups and dress in silks from London, but they don’t really belong here, and deep down they know it. They don’t understand a damn thing about this place, or you. And they never will.”

  One day Mathinna awoke to find that Sir John and Lady Franklin had departed for a holiday in the riverside town of Launceston, a two-day journey, and that she would be staying at Government House in the care of a houseguest, a Mr. Hogsmead, from Sussex.

  Mr. Hogsmead was imposingly tall, reed-thin, wore a pince-nez, and appeared to have little interest in anybody other than one particularly buxom convict maid named Eliza, whom the entire household observed coming and going from his chambers at all hours of the day and night.

  With the Franklins gone, there was little for the staff to do. When Mrs. Wilson discovered a group of convict maids lolling on barrels and gossiping in the courtyard, she directed them to remove every last pot and ladle from the shelves and scrub the kitchen with lye and vinegar. The stable boys washed out the horse stalls and scoured the carriages; the maids aired linens and polished candlesticks to a gleam.

  Without a routine or schoolwork, Mathinna existed in a strange purgatory. She wandered the property, forlorn and forgotten. Nobody seemed to realize that she was alone—or if they did, they didn’t give it much thought. She lingered in the kitchen with Mrs. Wilson, hung upside-down from a branch of the gum tree in the far corner of the garden, played with Eleanor’s collection of marionettes. She ate when she felt like it, which wasn’t often. She didn’t bathe. Sometimes she visited the cockatoo, desolate in its cage, squawking its mournful refrain. Kee-ow, kee-ow.

  At night in her bedroom, dark as a tomb, Mathinna listened to the rustling of the trees outside her boarded-up window and the creaky lament of the gray galah birds, and curled into a ball, trying to evade the loneliness that crept under the covers and nestled in beside her. After a few days she took to sleeping in Eleanor’s room, with its tall windows overlooking the garden. Eleanor would be horrified if she knew, but she didn’t, did she? Each morning Mathinna slept in longer; it became harder and harder to pull herself out of bed. When she did emerge, in late morning, she spent hours on the upholstered window seat, staring out at the weepy fronds of the blue gums, listening to the warble of the magpies.

  Perhaps Lady Franklin had been right—a view of the outdoors did make her melancholy.

  No. She was melancholy already.

  One rainy afternoon, Mathinna slipped into Lady Franklin’s curio room and gazed at her father’s ochre-and-red patterned spear and the skulls gleaming white in the gloom. Her mother’s shell necklaces pinned to a board behind glass. The portrait Mr. Bock had painted of her in the red satin dress. In the entire time she’d been with the Franklins she had never seen another brown-skinned person. She looked down at the backs of her hands and turned them over to look at her palms. She thought about the tea-drinking ladies and their prurient questions. The dance-party guests and their horrified stares. Why wasn’t it obvious before? She was just another piece of the Franklins’ eccentric collection, alongside the boiled skulls and taxidermied snakes and wombats.

  A marionette in a pretty dress. A cockatoo in a gilded cage.

  In the courtyard she unlatched the door to the wire cage and reached inside. Despite her aversion to it, she felt a strange kinship with the poor creature—separated from its own kind, at the mercy of people who didn’t even try to understand it. When she lifted it out, it was as bulky and lightweight as a hen. Its ashy feathers were silky soft. The bird allowed her to carry it to the trees just beyond the garden and set it on a branch, where it stared at her with its head tilted, seemingly confused. What are you doing with me? Kee-ow.

  She turned and went back to the house.

  Several hours later, when she returned, the cockatoo was gone. She wondered whether it had flown into town or into the bush, and whether it would ever come back. She wondered what would happen if she tried to leave, herself. Would anyone even notice? Maybe not
.

  But where would she go?

  Early morning. She winced into the light. Thick-headed, ears clogged and aching, throat so sore it was hard to swallow. She lay in bed all day, floating in and out of sleep, feeling like a muttonbird burrowed in a hole. Sunlight thinned and faded as she stared at the pink-flowered canopy above her head. Her throat was parched but she had no water. She felt hollowed out with hunger, but too weak to move. After a while she dozed off again, waking in a fever in the dark and tossing off her blankets before drifting back to sleep.

  When she woke she was shivering, her teeth chattering. Daylight, gray this time. Rain pattering the mullioned windows. She thought of Flinders, of how the rain thrummed the roofs of the cottages. The smell of sweet grass through the open doorway, babies swaddled in wallaby skins, her mother singing, her father puffing on his pipe, blowing smoke into the gloom. Her memories drifted, changing shape. Now she was running, running through the wallaby grass on a brilliantly sunny day, up the hill to the spiny ridge, her face tilted to the sky, the sun warm on her eyelids . . .

  A faint knock at the door. A voice. “Mathinna? Are ye in there?”

  She opened her eyes, closed them. Too bright. Lemony. Midmorning, perhaps. Yes. She cleared her throat. Croaked, “Yes.”

  The door opened. “Good lord,” Hazel said. “I knew something was wrong.”

  Hazel brought Mathinna lamb broth, tea made from sassafras leaves, and a paste made of ground fenugreek seeds for her phlegmy cough. She made her gargle with salt water. She brought a pot filled with lukewarm water that she dipped towels into before wringing them out and placing them on Mathinna’s forehead and chest to cool the fever.

  Feeling a trickle of water down her cheek, Mathinna opened her eyes. She looked up into Hazel’s face: the smattering of orange freckles, ginger lashes, her clear gray eyes.

  “Mrs. Crain sent us back to the Cascades,” Hazel told her. “She said we’re not needed while the Franklins are away. But I knew I should come back. I had a feeling.” Leaning closer, she tucked in the blanket. The disk she wore around her neck swayed against Mathinna’s cheek.

  Mathinna reached up and touched it.

  “Is it bothering ye?”

  “I don’t mind. I was trying to see what’s written on it.”

  Hazel held it out. “It’s a number. One seventy-one. They made us wear these on the ship. So if any of us went missing, they’d know it.”

  Mathinna nodded. “Did your friend go missing?”

  “Well, she went overboard. So I guess she did.” Hazel removed the spongy cloth from Mathinna’s forehead and put her hand where it had been. “Fever’s down. Shut your eyes.” Draping another cloth on her forehead, she gave Mathinna a long look. “I’ll tell ye a secret. Just before she died, my friend had a baby. A girl. Ruby. She’s mine now. They’ve taken her to the Queen’s Orphan School, but I’ll get her back when I earn my ticket of leave.” She traced the blunted edge of the disk with her finger. “It’s a bad place, that orphanage.”

  “I know,” Mathinna said. “My sister died there.”

  “Did she?” Hazel gave a long sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was before I was born.”

  Hazel shook her head slowly. “Ruby has to survive. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t.”

  After Hazel left the room, Mathinna closed her eyes. She thought of all the people she’d lost. The sister she never knew and her long-dead parents. Her stepfather, Palle, standing on the ridge on Flinders as she sailed away. Did he think of her? Did he worry? She wished she could let him know that she was all right, but she had no way to reach him. And besides, she didn’t know that she was.

  Government House, Hobart Town, 1842

  Mathinna was sitting in the kitchen outbuilding one morning, a week after the Franklins returned from Launceston, practicing times tables on a slate, when Mrs. Crain appeared in the doorway. “Good morning, Mathinna. Lady Franklin requests your presence in the red drawing room.”

  She looked up, heart thumping in her chest. Lady Franklin had not requested her presence since the dinner dance. “What does she want with me?”

  Mrs. Crain pursed her lips. “She did not say. And it is not for you to inquire.” She would not meet Mathinna’s eyes.

  The brocaded draperies in the drawing room were closed. The oil lamps cast strange shadows. Mathinna had to squint to make out the figure of Sir John, standing at the bookcase with his back turned, hands clasped behind him, motionless as a gargoyle. Lady Franklin sat in a chair, a book of maps open in her lap.

  “Come in, come in. Mrs. Crain, you may stay. This won’t take long.” She motioned Mathinna forward with an impatient flutter of her fingers. Closing the atlas, she said, “How are you, then? Well enough?”

  The question allowed only one response. “Yes, Lady Franklin.”

  “How do you occupy yourself these days?”

  “She was studying mathematics when I found her, madam,” Mrs. Crain reported.

  “Ah. Good for you, Mathinna. I wouldn’t have expected that, in Eleanor’s absence.”

  “I have nothing else to do,” Mathinna said sulkily. She’d never spoken to Lady Jane in such a tone, but there seemed little point in niceties now.

  Lady Franklin didn’t seem to notice. She gave a light laugh. “Boredom is a great motivator, I always say. You know, Mathinna, there are those who believe that higher learning is beyond the grasp of your people. Perhaps you are proving them wrong. Of course, there are certain . . . limitations to what can be taught and the progress one might expect to make. No doubt it has been as frustrating for you as it has been for us. Certainly we have tried . . . twice.” Addressing her husband’s back, she said, “Would you like to participate in this conversation, Sir John?”

  Without turning around, Sir John said, “I would like for you to get on with it.”

  Mathinna stared at his back. She thought of their early morning strolls. She thought of the cockatoo. The two of us don’t speak the same language.

  Lady Franklin clasped her hands together. “Mathinna, in a few months’ time we—Sir John and I, with Eleanor, of course—will return to London. Sir John has been recalled. And . . . after much thought, and discussion with our family physician, we have reluctantly decided that it will be better for you to remain here. For your health.”

  So. It was happening. They were abandoning her. In a way, it was a relief to know for sure. Even so, Mathinna felt a spike of anger at the flimsiness of the excuse. Where had they been when she was lying in bed, sick and alone? The Franklins had taken her from the only home she’d ever known, and she had not complained; she’d done everything they’d asked of her. But she had mattered to them only as an experiment. Now that the experiment had failed, they were done with her. She wanted them to squirm a little, at least.

  “My health?” she said. “I am much better, ma’am.”

  “Nonetheless, your bout of pneumonia is cause for concern. Dr. Fowler has concluded that you have a weak chest. Which is best treated in temperate climates like this one.”

  “Dr. Fowler has not examined me.”

  Abruptly Sir John pivoted to face them. He cleared his throat. “It is scientific fact that Aborigines are constitutionally disadvantaged in colder regions.”

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” Lady Franklin said. “England is no place for a native.”

  “It’s cold here sometimes,” Mathinna said.

  Lady Franklin’s neck was splotchy. “This is not up for debate. Our decision has been made.”

  Mathinna gave her a steady look. “You are getting rid of me because you think I am wild, like Timeo.”

  Lady Franklin slid her eyes toward Sir John.

  He turned back to the bookcase.

  Mathinna lifted her chin. “When will I go back to Flinders, then?”

  Lady Franklin gave a heavy sigh. “We are making arrangements for your care and will let you know in due course what has been decided. Now, Mrs. Crain, you may return Math
inna to her mathematics. I must begin to plan our voyage.”

  “Just like that!” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed, snapping a finger. “Back to England! And now all of us is wondering will the new governor keep the staff or dismiss us all? I’ve half a mind to find employment elsewhere and let them feed themselves for the next two months.”

  Hazel was crushing herbs with a pestle. “Your mistake was imagining they ever gave ye the slightest thought.” Turning to Mathinna, she asked, “What will become of ye, then?”

  “I’ll be sent to Flinders.”

  Mrs. Wilson grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t think so. The Queen’s Orphan School, I heard. Maybe it’s a rumor.”

  One morning after breakfast, several weeks later, Mathinna returned to her room to retrieve a book. When she opened the door, she stepped back in surprise. The room was filled with light. She went over to the window and looked out at the garden, and, beyond it, the grove of gum trees and sycamores. She rubbed the edge of the window frame, feeling the holes where the nails had been. Turning around, she surveyed the room. Everything else appeared normal. Her books were on the shelf. Her bed was as she’d left it, neatly made. She pulled open the top drawer of her dresser.

  Empty.

  Then the second drawer, and the third.

  She opened the wardrobe. All of her clothes were gone except for the red dress, which hung forlornly on a hook.

  “Yes, my dear, today is the day,” Mrs. Crain said, her voice falsely cheerful, when Mathinna tracked her down in the main dining room. “We’ve packed a nice steamer trunk with all your shoes and dresses. The wallaby skin you came with is in there too. And you’ll find a mince pie and an apple in that old rush basket. The driver will be here soon, so you might want to hurry along and say goodbye to . . . well, to whomever you wish.”