Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

  Laura Mornington

  •

  Tilly refolded the letter with shaking hands.

  Jasper and Chantelle were plotting to murder her. Perhaps that night was the night they intended to go through with their plans, perhaps not. Nonetheless, they were not innocent. Certainly, it was not for Tilly to decide their punishment, but she hadn’t, had she? She had decided nothing.

  Now that clarity was pushing through the guilty mud in her brain, she saw the fire differently. Fighting Jasper off. Him knocking the lamp over. That room full of old papers because there was no furniture left to store them in. Yes, she had locked him in, but she had feared for her own safety. The moment he was free, he had gone upstairs anyway because his lover was hidden in the house. A congregation of events, set in chain by Jasper and Chantelle and their murderous plans, that ended in their accidental deaths.

  Tilly didn’t kill them. She had tortured herself with guilt for months with no good reason.

  And now time ticked by on her last day here, on her plan to help Hettie escape so that she could absolve herself: there was no absolution necessary. How she longed to call it all off. To stay here and resume teaching Nell and wait for Sterling to come back to her arms. She choked back a sob.

  It was too late. She couldn’t go and face Hettie and say, “No, we are not proceeding.” Hettie’s mind was already fixed on holding her children again. Besides, the matching dress was under the hedge, the boat was in place loaded with supplies. Tilly’s crimes had already been committed, and she wouldn’t be able to stop Hettie now. And if Hettie escaped, Tilly couldn’t stay on the island.

  The only way out was escape.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Blood and Ash

  Like a condemned woman going to the gallows, Tilly silently left the house at the appointed time and made her way down towards the cane fields. The shadows were long, the air cool, the dusky sky turning pink. She wondered how Hettie had got on, escaping from the garden in her matching dress and matching scarf tied down over her hair and low across her face. Had anybody called out to her? Waved and expected a wave back and been startled by those big rough hands?

  Tilly was nauseous from anxiety. Her stomach roiled as though with seasickness. Every step felt heavy with portent. She crossed the cow paddocks, noticing for the first time that she couldn’t see any movement around the cane fields. Had they all gone in early this afternoon? That would make this easier. At least she and Hettie needn’t fear detection.

  At the edge of the field, Tilly paused. The wind rustled through the cane. She smelled the sea and the earth. She turned, as much to check if anyone was watching her as to say good-bye. Starwater was in darkness up on the hill. Somewhere in there, Sterling was working, Nell was reading or writing or playing. Their lives would go on.

  Tilly hitched her cotton bag up on her shoulder and plunged into the cane. The towering plants grew close together, crushing out the light. She couldn’t see her way to the other side, so she had to rely on the compass in her head to take her directly through to the other side. She knew there were narrow rutted roads between stands of cane, so she would have to be careful not to be spotted while emerging. But now it seemed as though she’d never find the next road. She was surrounded on all sides by plants, long stalks and green leaf-like shoots that rustled against her clothes and whipped her face. The ground was uneven so it was hard going. Underfoot there would be rats and snakes. The bottom part of the cane was sometimes broken and sharp, catching on her skirt or on her skin. The strong stalks stopped her from falling, but the plants were tough and dense, and she had to plow through them, pushing with her arms and shoulders, like swimming through sticks.

  She was concentrating so hard on pushing through the cane that she was surprised when she came to the first road. Only two shoulder spans across, it nevertheless gave her a moment to breathe. Tilly checked left and right. Nobody was in sight, so she bent double, caught her breath. She had studied the cane fields carefully from the back verandah of Starwater. Each massive square was divided into four neat rectangles by these roads, so she had to cross another three rectangles before finally emerging near the rocky shoreline. She looked at her hands and noticed a trickle of blood from her right palm. She sucked it. The metal tang of blood mingled with the sweet taste of sugar.

  Back into the cane.

  She grew more confident, pushing and plowing against the cane. A smell came to her on the wind and it took her a few moments to recognize it as smoke.

  Her heart lifted into her throat.

  In late autumn, they light it up.

  Tilly began to run.

  It’s spectacular, as though half the island is on fire.

  Her chest bursting, her throat raw, leaves and broken cane whipping and cutting her, she ran. Then she heard the flames, rushing up around the edge of the field. The undergrowth began to shift and slither with small animals, smelling the smoke and desperate to be free. She ran with them, hoping to find one of those narrow roads she could escape down, out of the fields.

  The heat and sound of the flames grew nearer, closing in on her. Her feet burned and her chest stung and her ears rang with terror. It was suddenly clear to her that she wouldn’t escape this, that she was doomed to die in this fire, as Jasper and Chantelle had died.

  And then she burst through onto a road. She looked wildly left and right. Flames everywhere. She stood in one of the last few places that wasn’t alight, right in the middle of the field. But if she ran down this road to the end . . .

  Frozen with fear. Fire surrounding her.

  She had to act. It was the only possible way she would emerge from this alive. She ran, down the long narrow road towards the flames. Beyond them, fresh air and freedom and life.

  The whooshing of air being sucked into the fire was almost deafening. She could see flames in the fields that were twenty feet high. On either side of her, blackened stalks were silhouetted against the orange fire. The next ten feet she would be running directly through it, the tiny gap barely any protection against the flames. She pulled her scarf over her mouth, put her head down, and found the last burst of speed she had in her body.

  The bag over her shoulder grew too hot. She had to fling it off, Grandpa’s wooden writing box tumbling in amongst the embers. Stinging pain pressed onto her shoulders. She could smell her own hair burning.

  Then she was free, stumbling to the ground, landing facedown in the dirt. She lay there a moment, coughing against the smoke.

  Get up, you have to get up.

  She climbed to her feet and cut across the cow paddock, fearful of what had happened to her body. Her shoulders were raw with pain. She ran as fast as she could, made her way over the cow fence and then down onto the rocks. Without thinking, she plunged into the cold water.

  Relief. The edge of the pain wore down. She lifted her shoulder and upper arm out of the water and considered them in the light of the fire reflected in the water. Her dress had burned right through and her skin was raw and dark pink. She would need a medical salve, dressings. On the next island there would be none of those things.

  Had Hettie made it through the cane field?

  Tilly stood in the water, her face working hard as she sobbed openly to the evening air. Pain and fear. Her throat burned.

  But she had to keep moving, in the twilight, to meet Hettie.

  •

  Tilly waded, stumbling, crying in pain. Her shoes were heavy and clumsy with water but she daren’t take them off lest she cut her feet on rocks. The salt water in the little scratches on her legs stung. Up past the cane fields which, one by one, went up in an orange blaze as the sky darkened to velvety blue from the east. How she longed to be sitting on the verandah with Nell, watching the burn-off comfortably, enjoying the soft evening and the hard, sweet smell of the smoke. Softly, ash began to patter down. Tiny, light flakes that dissolved on her skin. Black snow. She pushed on, got herself back up on shore once past the fires, and then picked her way over rocks to the
swamp.

  The last of the light was disappearing over the mainland, an amber blush in the west. The sea was pewter. The low tide meant she didn’t need to wade through murky water anymore, so she made her way along the mud, frightened by the pain in her burnt skin and wondering if she would be able to survive even a night without medical treatment, let alone a week. She pushed on, beyond endurance because there was no turning back.

  The blue ribbon was barely visible in the twilight, but Tilly didn’t need to see it. Hettie was already there. She’d untied the boat and was pulling it down to the water.

  “Hettie!” Tilly called, and it came out as a guttural gasp.

  Hettie looked around, her face half in shadows, eyebrows lowered. Then she went back to the task at hand.

  “Hettie, wait. I’m injured.” She stumbled forward. “Did you get caught in the fire?”

  “No, I went down the back way. Down the cliff. The idiot who was minding me stood right where I wanted to go.”

  “You climbed down the cliff?”

  “Of course I did. I want to escape. Here, help me with this.” She hauled on the rope and together they got the boat into the water. Hettie jumped in and the boat swayed a moment, then became still. Tilly stood thigh-deep in the swampy water, helping Hettie straighten out the oars. The boat was floating away from her.

  “Here, help me in,” Tilly said, extending her hand. “I can barely move I’m in so much pain.”

  Hettie said nothing. Her facial expression was neutral. She picked up the first oar.

  “Hettie? Please. I can’t climb in by myself.”

  With sudden brutal force, Hettie picked up the oar and struck Tilly around the head with it. She started to go down, ears ringing, and grasped desperately at the side of the boat. Hettie stood, making the boat rock unevenly, and this time smacked the oar across her ribs. The pain was unbelievable. Her hands started to slip, but then Hettie hit them too. Peeled her fingers off the side of the boat, pushed her into the water.

  And rowed as fast as she could, away.

  Tilly fought to stand up, fought to get her face above the water. Salt water in her wounds, her head spinning and thundering, her ribs pinching her so she could barely catch her breath. She would drown if she didn’t stand up. Mustering every last reserve of strength she pushed herself to her feet.

  “Hettie!” she called, but her voice was a wheeze. The boat grew distant, Hettie’s dark shape disappearing.

  The betrayal might have been the worst pain of all.

  •

  Stumbling, splashing, falling, catching herself. Black covering her eyes and lifting again by force of will. The ten feet between where she had been thrown off the boat and the shore might as well have been ten miles. Finally, finally, skirts waterlogged and dragging behind her, she collapsed on the mud. The pain overwhelmed her, sending her spinning into the dark.

  •

  Flashes of consciousness. The tide lapping at her feet. The memory of Hettie’s betrayal. The soft ash raining on her. But every time, her tortured body took her down again.

  But then there was light, flickering between the black branches. She tried to take a breath to call out, but the sharp pain in her ribs prevented her from doing anything more than gasping.

  Closer they came, three or four men: her addled mind couldn’t make out the numbers. Then Sterling’s voice. “I found her! Over here! I found her!”

  She tried to make her tongue move, but it wouldn’t. Her ears began to ring again. She stayed conscious long enough to feel his strong arms close around her, but then the pain of him moving her made everything go black.

  Tilly was aware of being jolted along, every movement an agony. Then she was somewhere soft and dry, flickering lights all around her. She heard Dr. Groom’s voice, felt her sodden clothes being stripped from her body. She heard him say words like “burns” and “broken ribs.” She heard Nell sobbing and wanted to reach out and tell her not to worry. She heard Sterling saying, “Do what you must.” And then a cloth, with a sweet gluey smell, was pressed lightly against her nose and mouth.

  “Breathe, Tilly,” Dr. Groom said.

  She breathed. Once, twice, three times. Began to grow dizzy, felt her blood pressure falling, her hearing fading out.

  Then merciful freedom from pain and fear.

  •

  Tilly woke to grainy dawn light and a body that felt battered. As her eyes flickered, she took in the scene. She was in her own room, the curtains were open, her body felt stiff, and one small wriggle told her she was bandaged in many places. She gingerly turned her head, and saw Nell sitting next to her bed in an armchair she had hauled in. The girl was asleep.

  “Nell?” Tilly managed.

  Nell’s eyes flew open. “Tilly! How do you feel? Are you going to die?”

  “I hope not,” Tilly said, but laughing or smiling were out of the question. “I feel as though perhaps I won’t.”

  “Oh, I wish I could hug you. But I cannot touch you. Dr. Groom said you are most terribly injured, but that you will make a full recovery now your wounds are all clean and dressed. And Tilly. Your hair.”

  Tilly lifted a hand to touch her hair, only to feel stinging pain in her shoulders and a thunderous ache in her ribs.

  “Some of it has burned off,” Nell said. “Your beautiful red hair.” And Nell began to sob, pent-up emotion released by this small symbol of Tilly’s bodily trauma.

  “Shhh, now,” Tilly said, all of the events of the evening flooding back to her. “I have many questions to ask before your father or Dr. Groom come.”

  Nell sniffed and wiped her cheeks. “You will not be in any trouble.”

  “How do you . . . Do they know . . . ?”

  “I knew. I suspected and . . . I knew and I told them that it was me that gave the boat to Hettie and that you had gone down to stop her to save me.”

  Tilly shook her head as gently as she could. “No, Nell.”

  “And I’m to be sent to boarding school for my sins, but I don’t care if it protects you.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Nell.”

  “You must let me do it.” Her face was flushed with desperation. “You must.”

  The door cracked open, and Sterling, wrapped tightly in a deep-red dressing gown, peered through. “Tilly? You’re awake?”

  “I did it,” Tilly blurted, before Nell could pounce on him. She would not have more guilt in her past. To go forward meant to tell the truth. “It wasn’t Nell. She’s lying to protect me. I did it for reasons that were stupid and . . . seemed important and . . .” Tilly fought tears. “I did it so she could be with her children again because I couldn’t bear the thought of her being apart from them.”

  Sterling stood shocked and silent for long seconds.

  “No, Papa, no! Don’t listen to her.” Nell threw herself at him, clung to him around his middle.

  He put her aside firmly but gently and approached the bed, knelt beside it.

  “Tilly. Tilly, say it’s not true.”

  She took a deep breath and the pain in her ribs arrowed through her. She winced and Nell cried, “See what you’re doing to her? Leave her be.”

  But Tilly talked over the top of her. “I cannot say it’s not true, for it is true. Nell did nothing. I was going to run away at the same time as Hettie, but she pushed me out of the boat and I don’t know why. I am a fool, and I know I will be punished, and I deserve to be punished. I cannot let this child take the blame for me.”

  Sterling bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. How she longed to reach out her fingers and touch his shoulders, run her hand through his hair. But she was in too much pain and all of that was over. Gone, never to return. Like Hettie.

  Sterling lifted his head and gently took Tilly’s hand. “This is the last softness I can offer you,” he said in a low voice, his thumb smoothing over the back of her hand. His eyes were filled with pain and sadness and horrible resignation. “Tilly, Hettie has no children.”

  Tilly beg
an to cry in earnest, great heaving sobs that shuddered through her body, making her injured ribs stab with pain. Sterling released her hand, slowly, and then stood, his face growing carefully neutral. “You will have to be under guard until I work out how to proceed. Nell, you aren’t to be here with Miss Lejeune. Leave immediately.”

  Nell cried, open-mouthed like a baby. “No. Papa, no! Don’t do it. Don’t!”

  Thunderclouds gathered on Sterling’s brow. “Get out of here this instant!” he roared, and Nell scurried away sobbing, slamming the door behind her.

  “My name isn’t Chantelle Lejeune,” Tilly said boldly.

  Sterling turned, eyebrows shooting up. “Then who are you?”

  “My name is Matilda Dellafore, formerly Matilda Kirkland. There is much I haven’t told you.”

  Sterling hesitated a moment, torn between duty and curiosity. Finally, he sat in the armchair that Nell had vacated, folded his hands in his lap, and said, “Then tell me now, for it is the last chance you will have.”

  Tilly told him everything.

  •

  It was nearly three weeks before Tilly could get out of bed and move about, and she was instructed that she was to go on the very next steamer back to the mainland. In a piece of unexpected mercy, Sterling had decided she was a victim rather than a perpetrator. He demanded her immediate departure from the island rather than pressing any charges, provided she answered any and all questions he had that might help in Hettie’s recapture.

  Of course they hadn’t recaptured her. Hettie would have known Tilly would tell them to look to the next island to the north, and gone in another direction entirely. All they had to go on was a description of a boat and a red dress. Tilly thought about the level of strategy and cunning that Hettie must have employed from the moment they met, even from before that, when she managed to convince Sterling that she should be a trustee prisoner. And she knew they would never find Hettie.