Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

  And when I turned it over, I saw painted on the bottom in a childish hand Nell Holt.

  I gasped. I had certainly found something of my great-grandmother’s, and while it was not what I’d hoped for, the thrill was there nonetheless. It was as though time melted away and I was touching the past, holding it in my hand. The wooden cat looked back at me. Its white paint was moldy and it looked like rats had chewed its edges. But it had survived, protected by bricks for more than a century.

  I pressed it against my chest and closed my eyes, holding on to the feeling of being connected to Eleanor.

  •

  I cleaned up the wooden cat and set it on my desk to watch over me, hoping some good luck might rub off it. In fact, I did write more than usual that day, and didn’t hate it too much. Still, I was happy when Joe knocked on my door just before lunch.

  “Hi,” I said, wary as always not to smile too broadly.

  “I’ve just finished the last wall, and I found something.” He pulled up a spare chair beside my desk and offered me a handful of papers. “One’s a diary entry, like the others. Eighteen ninety-two this time, so a little later. But look at this. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  He unfolded a piece of paper. On it, a map of the island was drawn. I saw it and had to laugh. Nell had drawn the house, the stockade, the cane fields, the mangroves; but had surrounded the island with sea monsters and pirate ships. “I love her more and more,” I said, taking it from his hands.

  “We know she was calling this place Starwater from childhood,” he said, pointing at the title written over the crude drawing of the house.

  “She’s named everything. Sterling Cliff . . . I believe that was her father’s name; we don’t know much about him, except what’s on the public record. Seven Yard Beach. The Swamp of Despair.” I laughed out loud. “Brilliant.”

  “Tilly’s Memorial,” he read. “That’s nowhere near the cemetery. I wonder who Tilly was. A pet?”

  “Looks like it was out in the gardens, so perhaps.” I turned the wooden cat around so it faced him. “I found this last night. It used to be Nell’s.”

  He picked it up in awe. “Really?”

  “It has her name on the bottom.” I glanced through the diary, then put it aside to read later. “That’s it, then. You’ve finished stripping all the walls. That means we’ve got every last thing Eleanor wrote and kept.”

  “It would seem so. The diary was in pieces, so I presume there were other parts. But perhaps they didn’t survive renovations or weather or people moving in and out.”

  The finality of knowing I wasn’t going to find what I wanted to find took a while to sink in. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me next. My pages, like the pages of my novel, were unwritten, blank, a mystery.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Joe said. I realized his hand was under my elbow. “You look like you’re going to faint.”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I said. He didn’t move his hand. We were so close that I could feel the heat off his body. Then he withdrew and rolled his chair back in his own space, leaving me in mine.

  I changed the topic. “So. Last day on the job?”

  “I can still do other things for you. Whatever you need. I can still do your shopping, fix anything that needs fixing.” He seemed so eager, but I couldn’t encourage it. “No, I think that’s it. I won’t be staying much longer anyway.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I do need to sell the boat. Can you help?”

  “Sure,” he said. “How about tomorrow we pull it out of the shed and take some photos to put online?”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” But he felt it as much as I did. This wasn’t the beginning of something as he hoped, as I had secretly hoped. This was getting close to the end.

  •

  May 28, 1892

  It is late.

  I am beside myself. I have heard that expression a thousand times, but now I understand it. I am beside myself, looking at myself, sitting in my bed with my diary on my knee, my inkwell on the sill, the curtains open but the window closed against the smoke and ash, watching the lamps swinging in the dark as they try to find her; but she will not return because she walked into that field and she did not walk out.

  The girl I am looking at, the girl who is beside myself, seems almost normal. There is a twitch in her wrists, yes. Her eyes keep flicking to the window, hoping to see the shape of somebody who cannot be—who cannot ever . . .

  I have sat here now for ten minutes, looking at my page, the last line I wrote. I do not know—

  What has happened has happened, and there is no saving her now, so I must protect her good reputation and not mention it because Papa would—I cannot imagine how Papa might feel and he . . .

  I must stop rambling. I must stop it. I must pull all my parts together and write down a true and accurate account of what I saw in case it ever matters in a court of law. But after I have written this down, I will bury it far from my father’s eyes. If I can spare him from the truth about Tilly I will.

  The suspicions I recorded in previous entries have been confirmed. The manner by which the act has been planned and carried out are still largely mysterious to me, so all I can record here is what I saw this afternoon, what I did about it, and how I ultimately failed to save her. If my words seem rational or cold, that is simply because to record my feelings about this terrible, terrible night would require more words than exist in the English language. Or in Greek, Latin, or French, those three other languages that she taught me so well.

  We finished lessons in the morning because Tilly had complained of illness. She met with me for lunch, but by then seemed distracted and emotionally fragile. Tilly’s heart is ever-present in her sweet face, whether she is blushing prettily when my father was nearby or fighting down black-eyed anger or preoccupied with some haunting thought of the past, which she never disclosed. I have come to presume that she lost a love, in awful circumstances, and that is why she moved so far from home and spoke so little of her past. She had called out several times for a man named Jasper, when she was sick with a fever; but had denied any great love for him when I questioned her. I will never forget the queasy expression—grief? guilt?—upon her face.

  So, today, I knew Tilly was preoccupied and I knew she was not really ill, and I suspected it had something to do with that awful woman, whom I now hold responsible for this evening’s horrors.

  I let her go and she went off to her bedroom and closed the door quietly. I grew agitated, as though her anxiety were contagious, and I promised myself that I would go into the garden later that afternoon, when 135 usually arrived, and I would find whatever way I could either to listen to their conversation and plans or, if I could not find a good place to hide, disrupt them. And if I saw even one more shred of evidence that Tilly were planning something too wild for my father ever to forgive her, an act that might indeed put her in a prison, I would stop her.

  Around four o’clock, I walked past Tilly’s door and it was still closed. I am in the very next room, so would have heard her if she’d gone into the hallway or into the east wing to look for food. I went into the garden, looking about for 135. She wasn’t there. As the weather has grown cooler and drier, she is usually in the garden from three, so I knew she wouldn’t be far away. So I found a place in the garden beds nearest Tilly’s plot, behind the hydrangea hedges, and settled there with my skirts in the soil to wait.

  At first I had sun on my hair, and it was pleasant. Soil and foliage have an agreeable odour; I suppose it is the odour of the natural world, which we are so often divorced from in our housebound lives. I know Tilly has spoken often of how working in the garden helps her to feel less of a bird in a cage. The way climbing a tree makes me feel.

  Time passed, though, and the sun moved on and cool collected in the shadows and still I heard neither Hettie nor Tilly, and I feared something was afoot.

  But then, it is an awfully large garden and perhaps they met down on its perimeter;
everybody knows I’m a terrible eavesdrop and perhaps they were being careful. So I stood and brushed off my skirts and then wandered through the garden, crunching through fallen leaves. I walked up and down the rows, all around the edges, and saw nobody.

  Which was curious because Hettie works every day in the garden except Sundays.

  I went back inside the house. From deep within, I could smell dinner cooking. Meat and pastry smells, and my stomach stirred with hunger. I crept down the hall to Tilly’s room and listened at the door. Nothing. I knocked lightly.

  Nothing.

  So I opened the door. She wasn’t there.

  Where was she?

  I left the room and closed the door quietly behind me and went back outside and down to the huge ancient fig that spread over the northern side of the house. Its bark was cool beneath my fingers as I hoisted myself up amongst its boughs and climbed as high as I could. The view was impeded by leaves and branches, but I could see the stockade, the cane fields, the cattle fields. Tilly had been wearing a dark red dress, so she would have stood out among white and blue uniforms. But I saw no flash of red.

  For some reason my eyes returned to the cane field. Something was different today. Then I realised: I saw nobody down there. No prisoners in white nor warders in blue. I watched for a while. The cane was very high, so perhaps I simply couldn’t see them because they were hidden behind the golden stalks. But no, nobody moved in or out of the rows, and I started to wonder if 135 had already deployed her plan, if the escape protocol was already in place and all the prisoners returned to their cells.

  But no. I saw them in the other fields, around the stockade, near the entrance to the blacksmithery.

  “Nell!” Papa’s call broke into my train of thought. He stood on the verandah, looking left and right for me. I climbed down from the tree and ran towards him, put my arms around him. How I wanted to tell him what I had overheard and what I suspected. But you must understand I was not perfectly sure yet—it still seems impossible that she had ever thought it a good idea—so I said nothing for fear Papa would hate me or Tilly or both of us.

  “Tilly is unwell and presumably won’t be at dinner tonight,” he said. “Given I have a busy schedule today, would you mind eating alone in the kitchen? Just let cook know when you are hungry.”

  “I will.” Tilly had lied to him. She wasn’t unwell. She was out somewhere, doing something. I didn’t know where or what.

  He looked around, admiring the garden in the dying light of the sun. “It’s a beautiful afternoon. Be careful in that tree.”

  I wanted to ask him if he knew why 135 wasn’t about. I should have. I should have exposed them, exposed everything I knew. “I’ll be careful,” I said to him. He kissed me on the top of my head and returned inside to his office, none the wiser.

  I sat on the verandah with my head between my hands, thinking and thinking. Hettie was missing, Tilly was missing, I had overheard them talking about getting Hettie off the island . . . certainly neither of them had used the word “escape,” but what else would that mean? I heard them yesterday, but couldn’t get close enough to hear details. I did hear Tilly tell Hettie of items she had acquired, ideas that she had. What other conclusion was I to draw than that Tilly was, at this moment, helping Hettie escape? But if I reported Hettie missing, Tilly would be implicated and bad things would happen to her. I didn’t want bad things to happen to her; so it was up to me to find her and stop her before events proceeded too far.

  So where were they? In the mangroves? At Seven Yard Beach? In amongst the high cane? I am not three people. I could not split myself in pieces and search everywhere. I felt overwhelmed and tired, so very tired. So I climbed the tree again, as much to gather my thoughts as to keep a lookout. I imagined I might look down into the garden this time and see them, where I hadn’t before: Hettie raking leaves while Tilly stood nearby, keeping a watch for father who didn’t like her going in the garden any more.

  I didn’t see them in the garden. Above me I could see a bough, not as strong as the one I was on, but I knew it would give me a better view. I put my arms around it. Tested it. It bent but did not break, so I climbed onto it, hanging on with arms and legs as I wriggled along on my stomach to the point where the view through the foliage was clearest.

  And I saw Tilly. Her grey scarf, her dark red dress. I saw her on the edge of the cane field, and then I saw her disappear inside.

  I had such a shock, finally seeing her, that I almost fell off my branch. I climbed down as quickly as I could, landed with a thump on grass that was growing dewy. I began to run, down the road, dodging carts returning to the stockade. A warder called out after me, “Miss! You aren’t supposed to be down here!” But by then I’d already climbed a fence over a cow paddock and was bolting towards the cane fields, to catch Tilly, to tell her to abandon whatever her mad plan was and come home to Starwater, to beef pies for dinner, to a simple, happy life.

  In my blind haste, my foot landed in an enormous cow pat and I slid over and fell hard on my bottom. The pain shuddered up through me but I stopped myself from crying out because I didn’t want anybody to hear me and pursue me. So I struggled to my feet and went slower, limping, towards the cane field where I had seen Tilly disappear.

  The smell was the first indication. A smoky smell. Acrid and sweet.

  Suddenly the empty cane fields made sense. No prisoners, no warders because tonight they were burning off the cane. I saw shadows in the dusk; men walking the perimeters of the fields, ready to set them alight with burning faggots made of dead cane leaves.

  Walking the perimeters because they burn the fields from the outside in.

  “No!” I cried. “No!” And I redoubled my speed to get to the field, to save Tilly from being burned alive.

  With an intense, sharp crackle, the first fire surged into life. I kept running towards it, heedless of my own safety. It was the field Tilly had gone into. I pulled up sharply as the air became sucked into the fire and the flames doubled and doubled again, whooshing up towards the evening sky, racing towards the centre of the field. As fast as the flames raced in, mice and snakes raced out, skittering across my feet. The smell was burnt molasses and vinegar, acridly sweet, choking me. Orange smoke in the deep blue sky. Then, softly, black ash began to snow down on me. I stood there at the edge of the field, watching it burn and turn to a smoking mess, watching the other fires burst into life, knowing she was in there, and she would never walk out.

  One of the warders found me, half an hour later. I was black with soot, sobbing on the ground.

  “Miss Holt?” he said, scooping me up in meaty arms. “Are you hurt?”

  I sobbed, barely able to make words come. “Miss Lejeune has been burned alive.”

  “What?”

  “I saw her go in the field, right before they lit it up.”

  “Good God!” He began barking orders, noise and confusion gathered around us, men with lamps, commands to stop the burning immediately. But it was too late, it was already too late. Why didn’t they understand?

  The warder—whose face I cannot bring to memory: I was so lost in the black moment of my grief and shock—carried me up the hill to Starwater. Papa, who had been alerted to some disaster, was on the verandah pulling on his coat.

  “Nell?” he asked, shocked, when he saw me.

  The warder deposited me on the stairs where I kept sobbing.

  “She says she saw Miss Lejeune walk into the field, right before it lit up.”

  I didn’t see Papa’s face because I was sobbing into my knees, but the silence was long and I heard his pain in his breathing, as he tried to find his voice. “Find her,” he managed, croaking across pain so brittle it threatened to break his throat. “Get everybody out there to find her.”

  He yanked me to my feet, heedless of my pain in the heat of his own. “Are you sure? Are you sure?”

  “I saw her from the tree. I ran down to catch her.”

  “The tree is a long way from the cane fie
lds.”

  “I saw her red dress.”

  He looked at me, horrible realisation in his eyes. Then he pressed me hard against him and I sobbed into his chest.

  They are still looking for her. But there will be nothing left of her to find. Papa is out there and he still believes she might be safe. I am in the house alone. I do not know what has happened to 135, but I can only presume she was hiding in the cane ahead of whatever they planned. But my heart doesn’t hurt for the prisoner. I blame her. Somehow, she put Tilly under a spell. And she killed my Tilly as sure as she killed her husband.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Come Together, Fall Apart

  I couldn’t stop talking about the diary to Joe, as we unlocked the boat shed the next day.

  “I mean, I’ve enjoyed reading all the little bits of diary, but this one was incredible. Prisoners escaping and people in burning cane fields. Like a novel, not a diary.”

  “Maybe she made it up,” he said, pulling open one of the doors while Julian attempted to pull open the other. “Here, let me do that, mate,” Joe said, securing the door on the hook in the brickwork.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you’re right. I couldn’t sleep after reading it, though. Who was Tilly? Was she the governess? Eleanor mentioned her teaching Latin and Greek. Or was she the superintendent’s girlfriend?”

  “Maybe she was both.”

  “Oh, stop! How romantic. Like Jane Eyre.”

  He smiled at me. “Okay, can you take Julian out of the way while I hook up my car and pull the boat out?”

  “Come on, Julian,” I said, taking the little boy’s hand. We moved over to the sandy gully, where Julian found a perfectly round rock.

  “Look at this,” he said, holding it perilously close to my eyes.

  “It’s a beauty.”

  “It’s almost like a marble,” he said. “I haven’t played with my marbles for a while. Do you play marbles?”