by Meg Keneally
Nell, though, was delighted. Flitting from stall to stall, smiling at the merchants, she seemed without any expectation of a return greeting. Most of all, she seemed to like fronting up to a stall and demanding their best goods be put on the account of the English Rose. She did not, perhaps, receive the deference she was hoping for, but no one refused to serve her and Sarah. Items were wrapped in oilcloth or paper, or just plonked into the basket that Nell held out. And whenever Amelia cooed, a smile was extracted from a stallholder who would then add a misshapen carrot or scoop of beans.
Having made her last purchase, Nell was looking at the sky. ‘Not close to midday yet,’ she said. ‘Herself must think us witless, to insist we take so much time on this. You should just leave it to me next time. Doesn’t need both of us.’
‘Does she think us witless?’ said Sarah. ‘Or does she just dislike our company?’
‘Oh, she certainly dislikes our company. But maybe there’s someone else whose company she prefers. Haven’t seen no sign of a Mr Vale. Perhaps Mrs Vale entertains a particular friend on market day?’
It was a joke Sarah would have considered frivolous a year ago. Now, her laughter rose up before she had a chance to roll Nell’s jest around in her head and condemn it as a vulgar distraction. She found she liked the idea that someone was still engaged in the business of life – she doubted, though, that the sour Mrs Vale was involved in any such activity.
‘Do you know,’ she said to Nell, ‘I think next time I will do as you suggest and leave the market to you. You are good at this, you and Amelia.’ She stroked the baby’s head.
‘That we are. Never fails me, this girl.’
*
‘You will turn the beds now,’ said Mrs Vale, sweeping into the kitchen as Sarah and Nell were taking plates and cutlery out of the sideboard for dinner.
‘But, missus, we only did that this morning!’ said Nell.
‘Clearly you did not do it to my satisfaction,’ Mrs Vale said.
‘This is going to take ages,’ Nell said as she and Sarah climbed the stairs, after looking in on Amelia, who was asleep in her little basket.
Perhaps it didn’t take as long as Nell had feared, but long enough so that by the time they returned to the kitchen, dinner had already been served.
As Sarah cleared the plates later, she noticed a lot of the food was uneaten. It was curious that the food they had brought back from the market could spoil so quickly. The beef, earlier glistening and covered in skeins of fat, was now tough and an odd grey colour. The cauliflowers had, in the space of an afternoon, developed black speckles.
Sarah did not, though, decide to tell Mrs Thistle. She was tempted to, certainly. But if Mrs Vale had replaced the market goods with lesser ones, Sarah did not know what had happened to the originals. And while Mrs Thistle gave the impression of one who appreciated honesty, the rancour caused by a false accusation might see Sarah out on the street. And really, Sarah did not see why she should help this woman who was profiting off her labour.
Still, she wanted to know. Information was the only currency she had, even if she did not intend to spend it.
CHAPTER 23
After their next market trip, Mrs Vale had them lay their purchases out on the table. She lifted a head of cabbage and sniffed it. Prodded at a leg of lamb. Examined a carrot from every angle. ‘Are you truly such simpletons? This is unacceptable! A waste of Mrs Thistle’s money.’
‘But that is exactly what you asked for!’ said Sarah.
‘I asked for beef.’
‘No, madam, I fear you must be mistaken, but you requested lamb.’
‘I know precisely what I requested,’ Mrs Vale said. ‘Go back, both of you. Prove to me you can tell the difference between a cow and a sheep.’
‘She did ask for lamb,’ Nell muttered as they left. ‘I heard her.’
Sarah nodded and asked, ‘I wonder, would you be able to manage this trip yourself?’
Over the past week or so, Nell had made several night-time excursions. Sometimes she returned to a contentedly sleeping Amelia, but more often than not to an exhausted Sarah rocking the baby back and forth as she tried to keep her from waking the household.
‘I think I owe you that much,’ Nell said.
Sarah squeezed her friend’s shoulder and kissed the baby on the head as they departed. A part of her longed to go with them down the dusty road on the chance she might see Henry again, but she knew the chances of that were slim.
The fence at the side of the house was overshadowed by a large fig tree, behind which Sarah concealed herself. Half an hour passed, and Sarah was beginning to think the landlady had just put by the fresher food for later use, when a cart approached, driven by a man casting glances around when his eyes should have been on the rough road.
He pulled up outside the English Rose and clambered down from the cart. She expected him to knock, but the door opened and Mrs Vale stepped out.
The landlady lifted her chin up and slightly to the side, as though to avoid an unpleasant smell. The man wore no jacket, something Mrs Vale probably considered a crime in itself. His shirt was undone at the neck, its sleeves rolled up, and the white fabric had a yellow tinge with dark blotches down the front. His sweat-stained neckerchief had been tied carelessly so that one tail was shorter than the other. He had the mottled, sun-punished skin of a redhead, but it was impossible to know the colour of the hair that had once sprouted from his bullish head. His nose was slightly crooked and had been shifted to the right, possibly by a blow.
When he smiled it was even more crooked than his nose, but Sarah was unsure if this was just the shape of his mouth or if he was smirking.
He spoke too quietly to be overheard, while Mrs Vale was growing agitated. ‘I am simply not going to give you two crates! Not for the same price!’
The man leaned closer to her as he muttered something, his crooked smile widening.
Sarah could not see Mrs Vale’s face but heard her exhale loudly. She went inside and came out with one small crate, then another. The man loaded them onto the cart before hauling out two sacks. He handed one to Mrs Vale and held open the other while she filled it with the items Sarah and Nell had bought. Then he pulled some crumpled notes from his trouser pocket and gave them to Mrs Vale, who pinched her thumb and forefinger around the money as though reluctant to touch it.
He took the reins, shook them and clicked his tongue, and the cart trundled off. Sarah waited an hour or so before she moved, skirting the house and keeping close to the scrub for a little way down the road, until she saw Nell approaching with Amelia in her sling and a basket over her arm.
She stepped out onto the road, and Nell gasped and then laughed. ‘Thought you were a bushranger for a moment, out to steal my treasure,’ she said, bending to kiss her daughter’s head.
Sarah laughed too, and they walked together back to the house.
By the time they entered the kitchen, Mrs Vale had put away any evidence of her crime and was sitting at the table with a cup of tea. She jumped at the sound of the opening door. The basket’s contents threatened to spill out, and when Nell adjusted Amelia, a turnip toppled to the floor and rolled before stopping near Mrs Vale’s feet.
The landlady looked at the vegetable, then at Amelia. ‘May I ask, how much has spilled onto the road on the way here?’
‘None of it, I was only—’
‘That child should not be here.’
‘Where should she be, if not with her mother?’ asked Nell.
Mrs Vale sniffed. ‘There are orphanages.’
Sarah had heard of the orphanages in Manchester, and had seen children taken there when their parents couldn’t support them, or were transported, or died. More each year. They never came out.
‘Amelia is not an orphan,’ Sarah said. ‘She has a perfectly good mother.’
‘Hm.’ Mrs Vale walked towards Nell, stretching out her arms. ‘Give her to me so you can do your work.’
Nell lurched back, clutching Amelia,
the basket still on her arm. A small wheel of cheese hit the floor.
‘Stupid girl, what do you think I intend to do? Take her to the orphanage?’
‘How would I know?’ asked Nell.
Mrs Vale tried to get her hands under Nell’s sheltering arms to take Amelia.
‘Let her go, witch!’ Nell screamed into the woman’s face.
Mrs Vale paused, then drew back her hand and cracked Nell across her face.
Sarah started forward to help Nell, although she felt her fist clenching and knew she would have to use every ounce of self-control to stop herself striking Mrs Vale.
Nell was panting. A droplet of blood ran from her split lip and splashed onto Amelia’s head. Nell made no attempt to wipe it away, apparently unwilling to loosen her grip on her daughter as she stared at Mrs Vale through panic-widened eyes.
The landlady stepped away; perhaps even she was shocked by what she had just done.
‘This is not what I would describe as a model of efficiency and decorum,’ said a voice from the door.
*
Mrs Thistle lowered herself into the chair at the head of the kitchen table and said, ‘Tell me what has happened.’
Nell took in a shuddering breath. ‘She—’
Mrs Thistle held up a hand to silence her. ‘I will speak to Mrs Vale first, if you please. I’m sure the both of you can find some work that needs doing elsewhere.’
Nell gaped at her, and Sarah wanted to cry for her friend. She put her arm around Nell’s shoulder and led her from the room. ‘Come along,’ she said gently, ‘Amelia could do with feeding by now, I’m sure.’ She looked over her shoulder as she left, unable to stop herself frowning at Mrs Thistle, who smiled at her serenely.
It was an hour before Mrs Vale came to find her, as she was dusting the mantelpiece in the drawing room, trying to navigate around the fussy little doilies and vases.
‘She wishes to see you,’ the landlady said, and swept out.
Mrs Thistle had helped herself to a cup of tea, or more likely had Mrs Vale make it for her. She gestured Sarah to a seat. ‘Tell me, Miss Marin, do you believe Nell should be able to call Mrs Vale a witch with impunity?’
It was the kind of question Sarah expected: one that ignored the inciting offence and condemned the response. ‘Mrs Vale was trying to take her baby.’
‘Only so she could get some work done.’
‘And after going on about orphanages! What was Nell to think? Do you believe someone should be able to hit a woman holding a baby with . . . with impunity?’ The word felt strange in her mouth; it was one of their words, owned by those who decided the fates of thousands from a comfortable chair.
‘I do not, as a matter of fact,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘I will deny it should you tell anyone about this, but I’d have done the same.’
Sarah frowned. Was the woman trying to draw her out further, to coax her into stating her beliefs and then beat her with them?
‘So Mrs Vale will be punished?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘But she will do it again, and the next time she strikes Nell she could hurt Amelia!’
‘Oh, if she does it again, she will lose her position. I know she is not the most amiable person, Miss Marin. But it is hard for a widow here. Her husband was one of my carters – his wheel hit a hole, the cart overturned. I will not see her or anyone destitute if I can help it.’
‘Would you be stricter with Mrs Vale if Nell wasn’t a former convict?’
Mrs Thistle shook her head, chuckling. ‘You think I care less for her because she came here in the belly of a ship?’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Miss Marin, there are those who think convicts – or former convicts – can’t be trusted to tell you their own name. But do you really think this colony could afford armies of clerks and battalions of labourers? Surely you’ve seen the road gangs with their overseer. Well, that’s the way of it. The guarded outnumber the guards, and not only breaking rocks. Private secretaries, even magistrates, came here because of a judge’s sentence. And of course most of us stay here once our sentences are served. We value those with a criminal stain more than you might think.’
‘We?’ said Sarah.
‘I’ve made no secret of it. Georgina Haddon, too – although she simply picked up a watch, enough to win her seven years. Whereas I,’ Mrs Thistle said, drawing her shoulders back, ‘stole a horse.’ She paused, then, as if waiting for applause, and Sarah tried to resist the urge to give it. She ignored the slight flare of admiration she suddenly felt.
‘You were lucky not to hang.’
‘So I’ve been told – the first time by Georgina herself. We came here together, you see. That was . . . 1793? So I have been here for over half my life, and have been free for over half of it as well. It’s an advantage here, sometimes, to have been a convict. Those who came free – those who came with the stamp of authority on their foreheads – have tried to remake the old world here, and the old world simply won’t be remade. There are chinks for people like me to slip through. And then, well, once you get wealthy enough, everyone just seems to forget that you existed before you could afford to buy their houses.’
Sarah had never heard of a wealthy person who had not been born to it. Mrs Thistle shouldn’t have existed, at least not according to the rules of the old world. She was probably wealthy enough to buy the cotton mill in which Sarah had worked. Although Sarah still mistrusted this wealth, seeing it as corrosive, she couldn’t deny that Mrs Thistle’s beginnings blunted her disapproval.
Sarah was not as sympathetic to Mrs Vale as Mrs Thistle was. She had very little faith in the landlady’s promises not to inflict violence again. At the thought of Amelia lying broken on the floor, dashed from her mother’s arms by a badly aimed slap, Sarah inhaled sharply. ‘Mrs Thistle,’ she said, ‘I believe Mrs Vale is stealing from you.’
The old woman listened quietly. When Sarah finished, she frowned into her teacup. ‘I thank you, but you will understand I need more certainty. I shall set my own watch.’ She stood, smoothed down her dress, nodded to Sarah and stepped towards the door, leaving her teacup where it was.
The thought that Mrs Thistle might soon be having the house watched, perhaps even that night, was both comforting and terrifying. What if the spy saw Nell slipping out?
When they were alone in their tiny room, Sarah took Nell by the shoulders. ‘If you must go, go around the back. It’s darker there, without the light from the main house.’
Nell did not ask why, just nodded. This was clearly not the first time she had taken a warning from a friend on faith.
*
Over the following week Amelia seemed to grow used to her mother’s absences, timing her sleep and wakefulness to accommodate them, so there was rarely more than twenty minutes between Amelia starting to grumble and Nell slipping through the narrow door. She would usually take the baby from Sarah, feed her, and lie down to claim whatever small ration of sleep was left between her return and their pre-dawn chores.
One morning, though, she did not immediately reach for Amelia, instead sitting on the bed opposite Sarah. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was smiling. ‘I found him for you! At least, I may have.’
‘What . . . who?’
‘Him!’ Nell said, as she went over to feed Amelia. ‘Your man with the tattoo.’
‘How did you—?’
‘At a tavern near the docks. I was talking, you see, to a fellow. And this other man, he comes up, takes my fellow’s shoulder, pulls him around and gives him a hearty thump on the back. And I saw that snake eating its tail, right there on his forearm.’
‘And you’ve never seen anyone else with a tattoo like that?’
‘Never. Oh, and I found a name for you. A young fellow was talking to your tattooed man and a few others, and when he left one of them said, “See you back at the docks, Keenan.” ’
Keenan. An unremarkable name, whose bearer might help her in a cause that
had started out as a desire for freedom but had grown to include a yearning for liberty for one set of hunched shoulders, a slight, freckled girl, and a mewling mass of need too young to understand that her mother was as much a prisoner as she had ever been.
CHAPTER 24
While Mrs Vale had not wreathed herself in the Christian values of charity and honesty, she nevertheless seemed to enjoy attending church. She told Nell and Sarah, and probably anyone else who would listen, that she sat within feet of the governor, and closer still to Mrs Thistle.
To further bolster her credentials as a relentlessly moral and well-connected woman, each Saturday Mrs Vale attended a sewing circle that included the wife of the colonial secretary as well as the spouses of other functionaries, whose connections she would frequently mention to her guests at the English Rose.
That Saturday morning, once Mrs Value had departed with her sewing bag, Sarah went alone to the docks, covering the distance in less than half an hour. She brought a pencil sketch of the ouroboros symbol and could not stop fiddling with it in her pocket. As she walked down the hill towards the water, she could see bristling masts, and when she reached the bottom she could hear shouts and creaks while the vessels’ contents were transferred into stocky, peak-roofed warehouses. By the time she plunged into the dockside mayhem, the paper was starting to tear at the edges.
Sarah kept an eye out for the silent men who saw more danger in conversations than in solitude. Those who refused to bow their heads in greeting to someone of a superior class, or who did not scuttle out of the way when the constables strode along the dockside, as they often did.
The problem was, of course, that this sort of man was unlikely to be forthcoming when a strange girl approached him asking for information. A couple of men were startled by the sight of her walking purposefully towards them, and disappeared into the crowd. Those willing to listen seemed surprised when Sarah, who surely looked unaccustomed to the docks, asked after a Mr Keenan, saying she needed to deliver a message from his sister; they just shook their heads. She gabbled her question more quickly each time, her desperation perhaps making them wonder why she was so interested.