Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

  Tilly saw Sterling in the evenings, of course. They conversed over dinner with no trouble, they even shared jokes and laughed together, but Nell was there to prevent any intimacy. She got to know him better, though, and admire him all the more for his principles, his intelligence, his good heart. She wondered if there were any such things to admire in her own conversation. He never gave any indication either way.

  The summer heat made going in the garden impossible until late afternoon, when the sun went over the water and the breeze cleared away the humidity. The balmy early evenings drew her outside, and sometimes she was in the garden until the crickets started to sing and the dew began to fall.

  Most afternoons she saw Hettie. They worked around each other, sometimes in close quarters, often in companionable silence. But Tilly didn’t let an afternoon go past without offering Hettie some small kindness. An expression of gratitude for help, a compliment on her work: any small thing to make the corners of her little mouth turn up. Affection grew, almost by accident. A mutual love of being bent over the earth, surrounded by the smell of soil and flowers, bound them to each other more strongly than hours of meaningless chatter might.

  She didn’t return to the chapel. She felt closer to God here in the garden anyway.

  Life on Ember Island became simply life. Dorset and Guernsey faded from memory and this warm, sea-swollen place became her home.

  •

  February steamed. Heavy rain all night, ferocious sun the next day. The air was always moist and warm, the garden grew in mad profusion.

  She would never like this weather, but Tilly learned how to live with it. The key was not to leave the shade between ten and four. Then, a quick walk down to the beach with Nell to stand knee-deep in the sea would cool her down sufficiently to start thinking about working in the garden. The mosquito net had to be in perfect repair: not even a tiny tear could be tolerated. And once it was tucked in tightly, her window open to catch the damp breeze and smell of rain, she could sleep on top of her covers almost peacefully.

  One afternoon near the end of February, Nell had cried off their walk to the beach because of a stomachache. Tilly wavered between staying to tend to the girl or cool off in the shallow water, but Nell waved her away forcefully.

  “I’m just going to lie in my bedroom and moan and groan,” she said. “You hardly need to be here.”

  So she walked down to the small strip of sand, peeled off stockings and shoes, and hoisted her skirts up over her knees to wade in.

  The sea was cool, not cold. The waves broke around her, sucking at the sand under her feet, calming her. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths of the briny air. Then opened them again. A ship went by in the distance, heading to the mouth of the river over on the mainland. People moving about the world, just as she was learning to stay here very still. She wriggled her toes into the sand.

  “Tilly?”

  She turned, saw Sterling, realized her legs were on display, and dropped her skirts directly into the water.

  “Nell said you’d be here,” he said, advancing as she waded out of the sea, skirts sodden and dragging around her.

  “What is it?” she asked, picking up her shoes and stockings. Ordinarily she would sit here on the rock and allow her legs and feet to dry naturally, but she couldn’t do that with Sterling here. Nor could she put stockings on wet, sandy feet. Instead, she held them in front of her awkwardly, as she stood in front of Sterling.

  “I need to review with you the order for schoolbooks for the new year. I’m afraid I’ve left it a little late. Nell’s always so far ahead anyway, but I don’t want her education to slow down because I didn’t order her the right resources.”

  “Ah, I . . . Can we talk about this tomorrow in your office, perhaps?” She began to walk back up towards the path, and Sterling fell into step behind her.

  “I need to send the order across in the morning. After dinner tonight?”

  “In your office. If you wish.”

  They came up between the graveyards, and Tilly became aware of warders and prisoners moving about. Men looking at her, shoeless, her wet dress outlining the shape of her calves and ankles. This wouldn’t do. Sterling’s reputation was at stake.

  “Good day, Sterling,” she said, moving swiftly ahead of him.

  “Wait, Tilly,” he said, grasping her arm.

  She shook him off. They stood apart a moment. Her heart thudded in her throat.

  “I said, good day,” she repeated, and redoubled her speed so she was almost running. She was out of breath before she reached the bottom of the slope, then she checked behind her. Sterling had gone. She trudged up the escarpment, her bare feet bruising themselves on stones.

  •

  An hour later Tilly was planting begonia cuttings when Sterling’s tall figure emerged from the house and made his way down, directly towards her. He came to stand in front of her and glanced around as if to check if anybody was watching.

  “Sterling?” she asked, curious, nervous.

  “I wanted to see what you had done with the plot I granted you.”

  She climbed to her feet. “I must look a fright,” she said.

  “No, you do not.”

  They considered each other a moment in the long afternoon shadows.

  “As you can see,” she said, waving her hand over the blooming birds of paradise, hibiscus, and daylilies. “It might be another year before I see how it will look when finished, but it is tidy and it is full of potential.”

  Sterling glanced only momentarily at the garden, then back to her. The question sprang out of him as though he’d been holding it back a long time. “Why did you stop our evening ritual?”

  She blinked, not sure how to proceed.

  “Did I say or do something to offend you?”

  “No, I . . .”

  “Today you wouldn’t even walk next to me. Have I embarrassed you? Please tell me the truth.”

  Tilly hesitated. “It may make things . . . awkward.”

  “The truth fixes everything,” he said, his conviction clear on his face. It was just such a statement, delivered without a shred of doubt, that made him the best of men.

  “Well, then,” Tilly said, not meeting his eye. “It was something Mr. Burton said.”

  “I’ve told you my opinion of Mr. Burton.”

  “He was quite sure that the whole facility is . . . that there is a rumor we . . .” She trailed off.

  “Ah,” he said, and she didn’t know whether he was looking at her, witnessing her burning face.

  “He said that the best thing for your reputation would be if I left the island.” She lifted her head. Sterling was staring off into the distance. “I am hardly going to do that, so I put some distance between us instead.”

  “And did he say anything else to you?”

  Tilly cringed, thinking of the veiled sexual threat Mr. Burton had made. She wasn’t even sure she understood it, but it had been darkly apparent where his intentions lay. “He said . . . something that no woman should have to repeat. Something that no woman should have to hear, said so violently and with such malignance.”

  He nodded, still not looking at her. A little muscle at his jaw worked. Then, without another word, he returned to the house. Tilly closed her eyes, feeling the pull as he left. “The truth fixes nothing,” she muttered under her breath. “The truth is a great burden.”

  •

  Sterling avoided her then for a week. He had other business at dinnertime, she didn’t even pass him in the hallway of the house. She wondered if he might be preparing to relieve her of her job. She tried hard to concentrate on lessons with Nell, but one ear was always cocked for the sound of his footsteps.

  But then, in the middle of the week, Nell was waiting impatiently in the library when she came from her room, dressed for the day.

  “Tilly!” Nell shouted, then remembered herself and dropped her voice. “I have something to tell you.”

  Tilly went to the window. It was closed,
and the room was stuffy. She released the latch. It grinded in the sill, but she got it open. “Oh yes?”

  “Come closer. It is extraordinary news.”

  Tilly frowned, anticipating something bad. She came to sit with Nell. A stack of Greek texts waited between them. Anything but Greek, while she was feeling so distracted. “Go on then.”

  “It’s Mr. Burton. He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Back to the mainland.” Nell held up four fingers. “Four days ago. Shipped off the island by Papa.”

  “How do you . . . how do you know this?”

  “I didn’t know it. I only overheard this morning. Papa was talking to the chief warder Mr. Donaghy about it, about how the prisoners will have to do their own Bible studies now. When Mr. Donaghy asked Papa why he’d got rid of Mr. Burton, do you know what Papa said?”

  Tilly’s throat was constricted by her own heartbeat. “What?”

  “He said, ‘Because he has been unspeakably rude to somebody dear to me.’ I wonder what he meant. Mr. Burton has never been rude to me, though I’ve always thought him a bonehead. Maybe it was that sermon, where he talked about how silly women are. Though that was a long time ago.”

  “Maybe you misheard,” Tilly said, hiding her smile. “In any case, you oughtn’t eavesdrop.” She tapped the pile of books. “You need to be getting on with your Greek grammar.”

  “Greek! Hurrah!” Nell reached for a book and was soon scratching away on her paper. Tilly sat by, eyes turned towards the window, suppressing the smile that tried to force its way onto her lips. Somebody dear to me. Somebody dear to me. Just for now, she put all the attendant worries and doubts out of her mind and basked in the warmth of that simple thought: she was dear to him, she was dear to Sterling.

  “There!” Nell proclaimed, sliding a sheet of Greek exercises under Tilly’s nose.

  The letters swam. She tried hard to focus. I take the torch from my father. I give the torch to my brother. It is my mother’s torch. I take my mother’s torch from my father and give it to my brother. “This all looks right,” she said. “Good work.”

  “Too easy.”

  It is my mother’s torch. How would Nell feel if she knew that Sterling had been speaking of Tilly, that Tilly was the “somebody dear”? Would she love the idea? Or was it too soon after her own mother’s death? “Do you ever miss your mother, Nell?” she asked.

  Nell cocked her head. “What a question. Where did that come from?”

  “We’ve never spoken about it.”

  Nell pondered for a moment, her lips tightly drawn. Then she said, “I think about her every day and when I think about her I feel hollow somehow. As if a piece has been taken out of me that I can’t get back. I suppose that is missing her. But then I remember feeling like that sometimes even when she was alive. Even before she got sick. She was often busy and that meant she got impatient with me or told me to go away and leave her be. I’d get the hollow feeling then, too. What about you? Do you miss your mother?”

  “I . . . I don’t even remember her. She died when I was four.”

  “Then I suppose I am lucky. I remember my mother well enough to miss her.”

  Tilly felt no clearer, but then perhaps she was preempting a problem that would never arise. Nell may have misheard, perhaps he didn’t say “dear to me” at all. Nonetheless, she made a little vow to herself that she would seek Sterling out that evening and boldly insist that they reinstate their evening ritual.

  It was in the early afternoon, while Tilly watched Nell stitch to the metronome, that the door burst open and Sterling himself stood there.

  Tilly smiled up at him, but he didn’t even notice her. “Nell,” he said urgently. “We need to go to our emergency plan number three. Please explain everything to Tilly. I haven’t time.”

  And then, just as suddenly, he was gone.

  Nell had gone pale.

  “What was that about?” Tilly asked.

  “Papa and I, we have a set of emergency plans, for various things. Fires, storms, and so on.”

  “So what is plan number three?”

  “We have to lock all of the doors and windows,” Nell said. “A prisoner has escaped.”

  SEVENTEEN

  A Rescue

  The island looked different today. Through the glass—for they were forbidden from opening the windows, despite the cloying heat—Tilly could see out across the fields. No white uniforms moving about. Instead, only blue uniforms, dozens of them, combing every dip and hollow. The two tall watchtowers were manned and a warder with a rifle paced the verandah of their house. The world was strangely quiet up here on the escarpment, without the constant footsteps of people coming to see Sterling in his office. Nor was Hettie in the garden: she was locked down, like every other prisoner.

  Well, every other prisoner but one.

  Nell came up behind her. “You oughtn’t worry, you know.”

  Tilly turned. Their schoolbooks lay forgotten on the table. There was far too much excitement to work. “Then why are we locked in?”

  “It’s just a precaution. We’ve had escapees before. Trust me, they are trying to get away from the turnkeys, not closer to them. They never come up here. They head for the mangrove forest. That’s where most of them get caught.”

  Tilly raised an eyebrow. “Most of them?”

  “The ones that don’t die,” Nell said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Tilly glanced back at the window. “It is strange,” she said. “We are up here so far from it all. Down there, all must be very tense.”

  “Yes, and Papa will be running himself ragged. He needn’t be down there, you know. He need only give orders then sit back with a pipe.” She mimed a man smoking a pipe with a smirk on his face.

  Tilly had to laugh. “Your father doesn’t smoke a pipe.”

  “Yes, but he could, you see. He could be one of those men who sits back and smokes a pipe, but he’s not. He’s something quite different. Whenever there’s an escape, he hopes to be there when they catch the prisoner. Because he knows . . . what goes on when the turnkeys catch one. They can be cruel.”

  “And how do you know ‘what goes on’?”

  “People shouldn’t say things quite so loud if they don’t want me to hear,” Nell said with a defiant tilt of her lips.

  Tilly reached out and stroked Nell’s curls. “Your father would be appalled. If you hear too much of this grisly stuff, Nell, you will become hard.”

  “And so what if I do?”

  “Then . . .” Tilly couldn’t answer. The first words in her brain were, “Then you’ll never find a husband.” It was the kind of thing her grandfather had said to her, to encourage her to regulate her behavior. But saying it to Nell seemed all wrong. So what if she never found a husband? With her brain and her strength of character, she would probably get on fine. Perhaps Tilly would have too, if she’d been given a chance. Here she was, working and earning a living without the benefit of inheritances and fancy country houses. In fact, she preferred to be busy with work than to be idle and produce an endless parade of embroidered cushions or watercolor paintings.

  “I would rather that you enjoyed the innocence of childhood a little longer,” Tilly said instead. “Because the adult world comes rushing upon one so quickly and so unrelentingly. There is time enough to be horrified when you are grown.”

  “Pish,” Nell said. “I’ll be thirteen this year. Juliet was married to Romeo at thirteen.”

  “I think you’ll agree that didn’t end so well.”

  Nell laughed, dancing away from the window and back to the table. “Come on, Tilly. Let’s pass the time this afternoon by me reading you my new epic. It’s almost the same as schoolwork. I think you’ll agree that I’ve used the word ‘crepuscular’ very well in a sentence, and thus demonstrated both my knowledge of twilight animals and extended metaphors.”

  Tilly took comfort in Nell’s complete lack of concern about the situation. She listened as Nell read, impressed as al
ways by the girl’s imagination and grasp of idiom and tried to forget about the escapee, and the strange empty feeling of the day.

  They didn’t see Sterling at dinner. The staff retreated back to the eastern wing of the house, eager to lock themselves in their rooms. Nell and Tilly went to their bedrooms early.

  Tilly stood by the window a little while. Lanterns bobbed up and down between rows of sugarcane and she imagined others would be glimmering dimly far out in the mangroves. She longed to open the window and let the cool evening air in, but dared not. Imaginings of a creeping murderer tormented her. Instead, she lay down on top of her covers and tried to sleep, with no success.

  She heard Sterling come in, very late, and rose to greet him in the hallway by lamplight.

  “Sterling?”

  He glanced up. He was muddy and sweaty and looked exhausted. “Why are you up so late, Tilly?”

  “It’s so hot and I’ve . . . I’ve been worried.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not to worry. We found a raft down in the mangrove forest. Old branches and driftwood bound together with rotting string and vines. We’re concentrating our search down there. That’s where he’ll be. A long way from here.”

  “What did he do, Sterling? I mean, what was the crime that had him sent here?”

  “I won’t talk about it, Tilly, save to reassure you he wasn’t a murderer.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving some of it sticking up at a strange angle. “I’m going to try for a few hours’ sleep and get back down there at dawn. I’m sorry. I can’t stop to talk.”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t let me hold you up.”

  Tilly watched as he walked down the corridor to his bedroom. The door closed. She tried to take comfort knowing he was nearby, that the criminal was down in the mangroves, that he wasn’t a murderer. She returned to her bed and slept fitfully.

  Some time, much later, she woke in the dark with her skin prickling. What had woken her?