The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

  “Not everyone. Only very bad girls.”

  Hazel looked at her for a long moment. “Not only bad girls, Ruby. Good girls too, sometimes.”

  Ruby shrugged. “All right. Anyhow, it’s time for you to serve my tea.”

  As the weather warmed, Hazel and Ruby planted flowers in the front, beside the house, and seeds for herbs in a small patch between the house and barn. When the herbs sprouted, they hung them in the sandstone shed behind the house to dry. The front garden became a riot of color. A golden wattle tree grew beside the barn, white roses climbed a trellis, a leafy bush with pale pink, trumpet-shaped flowers sat by the front door.

  Dunne’s practice was flourishing as free settlers poured into the port city. It wasn’t unusual for Hazel to show up in the morning from the Cascades with Dunne and find a huddle of people waiting patiently for his return. He’d been corresponding with a group of doctors in Melbourne who were forming an association of licensed physicians, and was learning all about the latest medical procedures. Word of his innovative techniques was spreading.

  Curious about the herbs Hazel and Maeve were growing, he pinched a few stalks with his fingers and held them to his nose. “How do you use these?” he asked.

  Motherwort, they told him, with its leaves like the palms of an old woman, quieted anxiety. A syrup made of water and the bark of the umbrella bush relieved coughing. The stewed bark of hickory wattle soothed inflamed skin. Crushed leaves of the spotted emu bush could be inhaled to clear nasal passages. Catnip tea fought croup; red alder eased hives.

  Hazel could see him fighting to overcome his skepticism. All those years of training—of being told to disregard the natural world, to dismiss the unwritten remedies of women as folk superstition—weren’t easy to overcome.

  As time went on, she began assisting in the surgery, along with Maeve. Dunne asked them to monitor the women in labor, and then to help with the births. Hazel was required to return to the Cascades at sundown, but Maeve could stay all night. Soon enough Dunne was delegating most of the obstetric cases to them, and only consulting with them when they asked him to.

  The ticket of leave, when it came, was almost anticlimactic. Several months after Hazel began working for him, Dunne wrote a formal letter vouching for her and offering paid employment and lodging.

  “Your ticket of leave is a privilege, not a right,” the superintendent said before releasing her. “If you commit an infraction of any kind you will be incarcerated again. Is that understood?”

  Yes, she understood.

  Reading the letter upside down on his desk, she saw that Dunne had signed his real name. Hutchinson either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  The matron handed Hazel the small bundle of tattered clothing she’d come in with, as well as Dunne’s copy of The Tempest. Hazel smiled. She would put it on his bookshelf where it belonged, with the rest of the Shakespeare.

  Before she left, she went in search of Olive. She found her with Liza, playing a game of whist. Despite multiple stints in the crime yard, they would soon be eligible for tickets of leave as well, they told her. “Hutchinson is glad to be rid of us troublemakers,” Liza said. “We was never any good at wringing laundry anyhow.”

  “Remember me sailor? Grunwald?” Olive asked.

  Hazel nodded.

  “He opened a grog shop in Breadalbane. Asked me to barkeep. I told him I’ll only consider it if he hires Liza to do the ledgers. He’s writing letters for us both.”

  “Does he know about . . .” Hazel pointed back and forth at the two of them.

  Olive grinned her gap-toothed grin. “He won’t mind. The more the merrier.”

  “I won’t skim off the top this time unless I absolutely have to,” Liza said with a cackle.

  Olive hoisted herself to her feet and pulled Hazel into a smothering hug. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “You’re a better woman than I am, toleratin’ that stiff surgeon. But I s’pose we all take our ticket of leave where we can find it.”

  Later, in the buggy with Dunne, Hazel gazed at the long high wall of the prison on her left, felt the rumble under her feet as they went across the tributary bridge, caught a whiff of the sewage. Then it was gone. She was done with that place. She felt as if she were seeing this world anew: woolly sheep in a field of yellow flowers, gray-green hills in the distance, blue butterflies darting in and out of flaxen grass. Black-and-white magpies laughing in the trees. She half worried that if she turned around she’d see someone coming after her, that she’d be hauled back to the Cascades for some infraction, real or imagined.

  She did not look back.

  That night, she and Dunne stood awkwardly in the hallway after Ruby went to sleep. She had made up one of the twin beds in Ruby’s room for herself. Dunne’s bedroom was down the hall.

  “Is there anything you need?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.

  “No thank you.” All of a sudden she was aware of his muscular forearm under his crisp cotton shirt. The bristles of his short beard. His smell, a not-unpleasant blend of perspiration and lye soap. She heard her own heart pulsing in her chest.

  Feeling herself blush, she stepped back. Did he notice? She couldn’t tell.

  In Ruby’s room, Hazel took Evangeline’s tin ticket on its red cord and wrapped it in the white handkerchief. (Those faint initials, that family crest.) She opened the top drawer of the dresser and tucked the small bundle under a pile of clothes, then slid the drawer closed.

  Someday she would share it with Ruby. Not yet.

  Hobart Town, 1843

  It was strange to feel so free. Free to feel the air on her face as she sat on a bench at the wharf with Ruby, watching the ships come in. Free to sit under the shade of a yew and marvel at the wide expanse of sky. To peel an orange—or two, or three—with her fingers, and slip the sweetly sour slivers into her mouth. To watch dough puff into pastry in a cast-iron skillet. To go to bed when she pleased, sleep in if she didn’t feel well, laugh out loud without restraint, put her belongings in a drawer without fearing they’d be stolen.

  It was strange to feel like a person in the world.

  Hazel sewed herself some blouses and several pairs of trousers, so wide-legged that unless you were paying close attention they looked like skirts. Her own mother had always worn trousers like this; they were more comfortable in the birthing room, she said.

  “You’ll be known as the odd lady who wears trousers,” Maeve teased.

  Hazel grinned. “Maybe I’ll start a fashion.”

  One warm afternoon, Hazel brought Ruby with her to shop at the crowded open-air market near the waterfront and saw a group of women, fresh off a convict ship, plodding toward Macquarie Street. Tugging Ruby’s hand, she turned away. She couldn’t bear to watch.

  Hazel was at the market with Ruby several days later, shopping for fruits and vegetables, debating whether to buy cherries or plums, when she became aware of a small commotion ahead of them. A rustling that sounded like wind through the trees. A few people crossed to the other side of the street, shaking their heads and casting quick glances behind them.

  “What is she doing here, in polite society?” one woman said to another as they passed. “I thought they’d sent her back to live with her own kind, where she belongs.”

  Taking Ruby’s hand, Hazel threaded through the crowd.

  It was Mathinna. She stood in the middle of a group of gawkers with her chin raised, her mouth half open. She was taller. Thinner. Her cheekbones jutted sharply and her lips were chapped. Her hair was matted. The hem of her dress was caked with dirt. She looked around her with disinterest, absently rubbing the necklaces of tiny green shells she wore around her neck.

  “Fer shame,” a man said, full of scorn. “She’s on the sauce.”

  Now that he said it, Hazel realized it was true. “Mathinna,” she called.

  The girl turned with a frown. Then broke into a half smile as recognition dawned. “Hazel,” she said in a lazy lilt. “It’s you.” She swayed a lit
tle. “I still have them,” she said, patting the necklaces.

  “I’m glad.”

  The onlookers were quiet, appraising the exchange.

  Fixing her eyes on Ruby, Mathinna said, “Is this your girl?”

  “Yes. Ruby.”

  “Ru-by,” she said in a singsong. She smiled broadly. “Hello, Ru-by.”

  “This is Mathinna,” Hazel told Ruby. “Can you say hello?”

  “Hello,” Ruby whispered, stepping shyly behind Hazel.

  Mathinna tilted her head at Hazel. “They let you out.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Hazel felt her cheeks go pink. Though ex-convicts were everywhere, it wasn’t considered civil to mention this fact in public. Taking Ruby’s hand, she pointed at a small green park across the street. “Shall we go over there?”

  “All right.” Mathinna pushed her arms out in front of her and then to the side, her fingers spread wide. “Step back,” she said loudly. When the crowd parted, she led Hazel across the street. Gazing straight ahead, her gait overly deliberate, she ignored the people pointing and staring, whispering behind their hands.

  When they reached the park, Hazel said, “I tried to see ye at the orphanage. They wouldn’t allow it.”

  “I know.”

  “They told ye?”

  “They didn’t tell me anything. They locked me in a room. But you said you would, and I believed you.”

  Hazel felt an ache in her throat. “How long were ye there?”

  Mathinna wagged her head slowly, as if trying to remember. “I don’t know. I couldn’t even tell how much time passed.” She reached up and touched her head. “They beat me. Shaved my head. Dunked me in ice water. I don’t know why. They said I was insolent, and maybe I was.”

  “Oh, Mathinna. Ye were a child.”

  “I was.” Her voice trembled. She looked down.

  Still are, Hazel thought. The crowd across the street had mostly dispersed, though some were still gaping at them. She motioned toward a bench under a gum tree, facing in the other direction. “Will you sit with us for a minute?”

  Mathinna nodded.

  On the bench, Hazel pulled Ruby onto her lap. Mathinna sank down beside them. Sun filtered through the drooping leaves and dandelion-like flowers of the tree above them, dappling their faces with light.

  “When did ye leave the orphanage?” Hazel asked.

  Mathinna lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “All I know is one day they pulled me out and put me on a boat back to Flinders. But it wasn’t the same. My stepfather had died. Influenza, they said.” She shook her head again. A tear slid down her face. “Most of the people I knew were dead. The rest were wasting away. And anyway I’d lost the language. I was too . . . different. So they sent me back.”

  “To the orphanage?”

  “Yes, for a while. Then to a wretched place called Oyster Cove. An old convict station. Everyone was sick and dying there too.”

  Hazel looked into the girl’s glistening eyes. Tears welled in her own. “So how did ye end up here?”

  “I ran away. Found work with a seamstress who runs a grog shop outside of town. She lets me rent a room.”

  “And what do ye do for her?”

  “Sew. Serve rum. Drink rum.” She laughed a little. “Go to bed and get up and do it again. The nights are long, but I sleep all day, mostly. For one thing, to avoid . . .” She gestured toward the other side of the road.

  “People are rude.”

  “I’m used to it.”

  Ruby pointed at Mathinna’s necklaces. “Pretty.”

  Mathinna ran her fingers along the shells. She seemed happy to change the subject. “My mother made these,” she told Ruby. “And your mother”—she raised her chin at Hazel—“stole them back from the lady who took them from me.”

  Hazel winced a little. “I didn’t really steal them,” she told Ruby. “They never belonged to . . . that person.”

  Mathinna bent toward Ruby. “Would you like one?”

  Ruby beamed, reaching toward the necklaces.

  “Oh, no. Ye really shouldn’t.” Hazel closed her hands over Ruby’s grasping fingers. She looked at Mathinna over the top of Ruby’s head. “They’re yours, Mathinna.”

  “I don’t need all of them. They’re meant to be shared. It’s just I’ve never had anyone to give one to.” She jiggled them with her fingers. “The thing is, they’re tangled together. Will you help?”

  “I want one, Mama,” Ruby said.

  Mathinna lifted the clump of necklaces over her head and handed them to Hazel. “You were the only person who was truly kind to me in all the years I lived with the Franklins.”

  Hazel felt her heart twist. She hadn’t done much, after all. It was terrible to realize that her paltry gestures were the only real affection Mathinna had been shown. She thought of how Mathinna had wandered around the property after the Franklins had gone on holiday without her.

  Looking down at the necklaces in her hands, Hazel took a breath. “Well . . . I have become skilled at knots.” Running her fingers over the shells, she worried the clusters until they loosened and the necklaces fell into three separate long strands. She looped them over the web of her thumb and forefinger and held them out.

  Mathinna took two necklaces and draped them around her own neck. Then she slung the third around Ruby’s and held it up, showing her the iridescent green shells. “I watched my mother make this. She used a wallaby tooth to prick these tiny holes, then rubbed the shells with muttonbird oil to make them shiny. See?”

  Ruby touched the necklace daintily with the tip of her finger.

  “Just imagine you’re the thread,” Mathinna told her. “And the people you love are these shells. And then they’ll always be with you.” When she leaned in close, Hazel caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath. “It’s good to know you are loved. You know your mama loves you, don’t you, Ruby?”

  Ruby nodded, a smile spreading across her face.

  Hazel thought of her own childhood—how little tenderness she’d been given. She and Mathinna both had had to take whatever scraps they could get. “Come with us,” she said impulsively. “We live just a few streets away, in the home of a doctor. There’s a room, a small room, but it would be your own. Ye could get back on your feet.”

  Mathinna laughed, a laugh that started deep in her gut and rose into her throat. “I am on my feet, Hazel.”

  “But drinking, and—and staying up all night . . . You’re too young, Mathinna. You’re not meant for this kind of life.”

  “Ah—I don’t know. What kind of life am I meant for?”

  For a moment both of them were silent. It was hard to know what to say. Hazel listened to the cawing of seagulls, the raised voices of vendors hawking their wares in the market across the street.

  “If I’d stayed on Flinders, I’d probably be dead,” Mathinna said finally. “If the Franklins had taken me to London, I’d still be trying to be somebody I will never be. Here I am. Living the only life I was given.” Abruptly, she stood, swaying slightly. “Don’t worry about me, Hazel. I’m a wanderer. I’ll be all right.” Spreading her open hand across her chest, she said, “Tu es en moi. Un anneau dans un arbre. You are in me, like a ring inside a tree. I won’t forget it.”

  Sitting on the bench with Ruby, watching Mathinna make her way down the street, Hazel felt a strange and unquenchable sadness. They were, both of them, exiles, torn from their homes and families. But Hazel had stolen a spoon to earn that status; Mathinna had done nothing to deserve her fate. Hazel was marked with the convict stain and would be for many years, but it erased itself as time went on. She could already feel it lessening. She could stroll through the market with a basket over her arm, and Ruby’s hand in hers, and no one would guess. Mathinna had no such luxury. She would never be able to melt into the crowd, to go about her business without judgment and suspicion.

  “Where’s she going, Mama?” Ruby asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s nice.
”

  “Yes.”

  Ruby fingered the shells around her neck.

  “Do ye like your necklace?” When Ruby nodded, Hazel said, more sharply than she intended, “It’s special. Ye must take good care of it.”

  “I know. I will. Can we get cherries, Mama?”

  “Yes.” Hazel sighed, rising from the bench. “We can get cherries.”

  Hobart Town, 1843

  The first meeting of the Association of Licensed Physicians in Melbourne was scheduled for mid-February, and Dunne had decided to attend. It was several days’ journey by ship; he planned to remain on the mainland for a week to learn about some surgical innovations. Maeve would stay in a small spare room at the back of the house while he was away, and she and Hazel would mind the practice. If emergencies arose that they couldn’t handle, they’d send patients to Hobart Hospital for treatment.

  It was a temperate afternoon. Clouds drifted across a powder-blue sky. Gulls swooped overhead, yawping their plaintive lament. The ship to Melbourne was scheduled to depart from Hobart Town at three o’clock, and Hazel decided to accompany Dunne to the wharf, a ten-minute stroll. As they walked, they discussed a patient’s ongoing treatment, a Dickens novel Hazel was reading that featured a character sentenced to transportation, a lesson plan for Ruby.

  “Eleven days,” Dunne said at the gangplank. “You’ll be fine without me?”

  “Of course we’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will.” He squeezed her hand. “Tell Ruby goodbye for me.”

  “I will.” Ruby had been building fairy houses with Maeve in the back garden when they’d left.

  Sitting on a bench at the Elizabeth Street Pier after Dunne had boarded, Hazel watched the crew of the large wooden ship scurry to raise its gangplank. The air smelled of burning wood, wildfires from just beyond the perimeter of town. She gazed out at the spinachy seaweed on the pebbled shore and the boats nodding in the harbor. Sunlight glittered on the waves, an inverse of stars.

  She thought, as she often did when looking out at the water, about Evangeline, out there in the deep. She remembered a line from The Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies. / Of his bones are coral made. Ariel tells Ferdinand that his father, who drowned, underwent a sea change: his bones transformed into coral, his eyes pearls.