Ember Island

by Kimberley Freeman

Tilly lay in bed, awake, very late that night. She had no trouble fighting sleep. Her mind whirled. Sometimes she remembered what she had done, or what she intended to do, with a terrible jolt. She had not been bred for such things; for burning houses and helping prisoners escape. She had been bred for tea and meek conversation. And yet, these things had happened; and she needed to make peace with the fact that she was not meek. She had never been meek.

  Long after midnight, when the house was quiet, and the sigh of the wind outside and the ticking clock in the parlor were the only sounds, Tilly rose and lit a candle. Her feet creaked lightly on the floor, so she moved slowly. Past Nell’s room safely, through to the dining room, then to the door of Sterling’s office.

  The doorknob was cool in her hand. She turned it and the door opened. She slipped in, closed the door behind her. She was overwhelmed by the smell of the place. His smell. Tilly placed her candle on the desk. Shadows flickered across spines of record books, papers laid out in neat piles, inkwells and pens, across the framed map of Moreton Bay hung on the wall. On Sterling’s blotting pads were doodles of seabirds: some with spread wings, others standing on rocks or in water. They were beautiful, rendered in soft pen strokes, with finesse and fine form. She was fascinated by the idea of Sterling as an artist: he always seemed such a practical man. A lover of art but not a man with time to make it. Indeed, he hadn’t time to make it. These were blotting-paper doodles.

  Tilly shook herself. It wasn’t time for reflection, nor was it time to fall deeper in love with Sterling. This process she had set in motion would take her away from him forever; the double duty of freeing Hettie and denying herself Sterling’s love would surely absolve her sins. Instead of mooning over Sterling, she should be searching drawers.

  She started with the desk. She found two keys tied on a piece of narrow rope. Was it to be that easy? She laid them on the desktop and went to the next drawer. In this one she found blank sheets of paper like the ones he gave Nell. In the next drawer there were boxes with ink bottles in them, and another key; this one on a loop of metal with a paper tag on it. Nothing was written on the tag. Tilly put it with the other keys. Now she turned to the bureau behind the desk. Four drawers. In amongst empty ledgers, pencils, candles, matches, snuffers, rulers, and balls of string, she found two more sets of keys. All together, she had seven keys. She glanced around the room. No more drawers.

  Tilly sat down at Sterling’s office chair, considering the keys. Which one was the one to the boat shed? The only way to know was to go down there now and try them all, one by one.

  She gathered them up in her palm, and returned to her room. This time she dressed, pulled on stockings and shoes, lifted the sash and climbed out her window, just as she had done that afternoon. The night was cool and she shivered a little. But the sky was clear, a million stars, and the path down to the boat shed dry.

  The island appeared deserted at night. With all the prisoners counted and locked in, the warders either went to their own beds or contracted in small crews around the hulking black shape of the stockade. Tilly wore a dark dress so she wouldn’t catch the eye of anyone, should they be out at this time of night; but she feared nothing from discovery while simply walking down the road. She was a free woman after all, and a late-night bout of insomnia could explain away her movements. No, it was when she was at the boat shed that she needed to be fearful, careful. So she took her time walking down there, being aware of sights and sounds. The movement of palm leaves, the white-bright sliver of moon, the shush and pull of the sea. Near the boat shed was the tall lookout tower they used when somebody had escaped. Now, it was empty, a spindly white ghost in the dark.

  She had no light but the stars and the thin moon. She fumbled through the keys, telling them apart with her fingertips. The first key she came to was clearly too big for the lock. The second fit the lock but wouldn’t turn. Tilly pulled it out, but it was stuck. Hot fear engulfed her. She wriggled it, looking around wildly. With a sudden jerk it slipped out. She paused a moment, walked away from the shed. Surveyed the area all around. Nobody, nothing. The third key, the single key with the paper tag, slid in easily. She took a deep breath and turned it.

  Click.

  The lock gave. The handle turned. The door swung outwards.

  Tilly opened it only as far as she needed to slip inside, then closed it behind her. Now she was in pitch black, cursing herself for not having brought a lamp. She stood very still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but still could make out nothing more than a few shapes less dark than the black surrounds. So she put out her hands and gingerly felt her way forward. She bumped almost instantly into the prow of a rowboat. With her hands, she felt around its contours. It was upside down on the ground, next to another like it. She presumed there were a number of rowboats in here, but where were the oars? Shuffling on the dirt floor, careful not to kick anything and bruise her shins, she made her way further into the shed. Against the stone back wall she found oars, felt along them to see they were supported by hooks in the wall.

  Satisfied that she understood where the important things were in the shed, Tilly quietly slipped out and locked the door. She knew she needed to return to the house and replace the keys, memorizing the drawer where the paper-tagged key rested, but her mind felt heavy. So she walked down to the jetty and along the wooden boards, then sat down with her legs over the side, her hands on the rough timber. Turning ideas over in her mind, plans coalescing, the future rushing up to meet her.

  •

  “We’ll go out through the mangroves,” Tilly told Hettie, after four days of wild winds that had kept her inside in the afternoons. “I will have the boat waiting for you.”

  “How will you get it there?” They sat together on the grass, shielded from curious eyes by the hedges.

  “I’m still working that out. Do you know how often they use the boats? Count them?”

  “I have no idea.” Hettie crossed her knees and hunched over them. “You don’t understand. I spend most of my time inside that stone box. It boils in summer and freezes in winter. I come to the garden a few hours a day and that is my life, in its entirety. I don’t know what else happens on this island.”

  “Well, I’ll find out. But it will mean you have to escape from the garden in the late afternoon, before the turnkey comes to take you back to your cell.”

  Hettie took a deep shuddering breath.

  “It will be all right,” Tilly said.

  “What if somebody sees me? This prison uniform is so . . . white.”

  “I’ll loan you one of my dresses.”

  Hettie’s mouth twisted wryly. “I will not fit your dresses, Tilly.”

  Tilly turned her eyes up to the sky, thinking. A lone gull wheeled overhead, catching thermal currents under his wings. She smiled, watching it. “Do you think that gull would enjoy himself so much, if he knew he was on a prison island?”

  “He’s in the sky. The sky isn’t a prison. Nor is the sea.”

  Tilly turned her attention back to Hettie. “I will get you two dresses. One to wear on the day, that looks like one of mine. Then, if somebody sees you, they will think it’s me and not pursue you. And one for the onward journey.”

  “Where will you get these dresses?”

  “That I am also still working on. I could make them, but Nell would see and ask questions . . . In any case, let me take your measurements. Have you any garden twine?”

  “No. But there is some holding the lemon trees straight. Wait here.”

  Hettie shuffled off and Tilly waited on the grass. She might have to go to the mainland. It was a matter of asking Sterling, and he wouldn’t say no. They had not spoken more than a few words to each other since the night she broke the sherry glass. He usually said something friendly over dinner; she usually answered in short, dispassionate sentences, always careful not to be so cool as to arouse Nell’s suspicion.

  Tilly stood when Hettie returned with a length of twine.

  “Lift up your arm
s,” she said, and then wrapped the twine around her bust, tied a little knot at the right point. Then she moved down to Hettie’s thick waist, her mannish hips. She became very aware of the other woman’s physical presence. Because Hettie often kept her head low and wore a deferential expression in her soft eyes, Tilly had never noticed before how powerfully built she was. She thought of Sterling’s words; how Hettie had held two pillows over her husband’s face. Now Tilly could imagine it too well: the force in her hands, the strength in her arms and trunk.

  Tilly balled up the twine and kept it tightly in her fist. “Hettie,” she ventured. “Why does the court record say nothing of your husband’s violence towards you?”

  “It doesn’t? How do you know?” Her eyebrows turned up, her forehead furrowed.

  “Sterling said that you had . . . another man, who helped you.”

  Hettie’s eyes dropped, and she clenched and unclenched her hands. “Of course. Of course they would say that about me. I had a friend and, yes, I did love him. Yes I did wish for a life with him. But I knew it wasn’t possible. I’m not a fool.” Hettie lifted her head. “Look at me, Tilly. I’m not beautiful. I’m not young. I’m not you with your milky skin and bright hair and long lashes. What man would love me? No, he was a friend to me. He lived across the road and that awful night, after I had . . . defended myself. After I had been hit over the head with a cast-iron pan and he had threatened the children . . . My husband had been away a little while, and he had returned with an intent to unleash all his stored rage upon us. So that night, after I smothered my husband, I called on my friend, my neighbor, and asked him what I should do. I was desperate. He helped me take my husband’s body into bushland.” Hettie took a big breath, her eyes going towards the sea. “He looked so peaceful there, lying under a tree.”

  “Did you tell all this to the police? To the judge?”

  “Of course I did. Tilly, they charged my friend too. He’s in prison too, because of me. On a much shorter sentence. At least they believed me that he knew nothing about the murder until after it was done.”

  Tilly was silent a few moments.

  “You believe me, don’t you?” Hettie said, her voice desperate. “I told them. I told all of them how he had treated me, what he had done to me. I showed them my bruises.”

  “Yes, I believe you,” Tilly said. “I’ve not been in this world very long, but I have seen plenty of evidence that men do not like women’s tempers and seek to punish them for it. I have seen that they believe the worst of women very quickly, that a precocious girl is called uncontrollable, that we are thought to be ruled by our passions while they believe themselves rational and our judges. I believe you, Hettie Maythorpe. I believe you.”

  Hettie managed a smile.

  “I need to go away and think about how all this is to be done,” Tilly said, turning away. “I will find you when I know anything at all. You aren’t to worry. I will take care of everything.”

  “Wait, Tilly,” Hettie said. “I need to ask you something.”

  Tilly faced her. The cool rush of sea air lifted her hair at her nape. “Go on.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Tilly couldn’t speak for a long time. There were so many possible answers. In the end, she said, “Because I have to.”

  Hettie seemed about to ask for clarification, then changed her mind. “I will see you soon,” she said.

  “As soon as ever I can,” Tilly reassured her.

  •

  It was early the next morning that Tilly arrived at Sterling’s office door. She had not slept well, again, and gave a brief, vain thought for the dark shadows under her eyes. But then she reminded herself she had no claim on Sterling, no future with Sterling, so it wouldn’t matter if she had grown two heads. She gave two sharp raps, and heard him say, “Come.”

  Tilly opened the door.

  His surprise to see her was in his eyes, in his body language as he quickly put aside his work and stood to greet her. “Tilly. I hadn’t thought to see you here.”

  “I need to speak with you before lessons start for the day,” she said, keeping her voice very even. She wouldn’t have him thinking her irrational. “I have come to request a short leave of absence to travel to the mainland.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “My business is my own,” she said.

  Sterling nodded softly. “Of course it is,” he said. He walked to his window and looked out. “It’s a beautiful morning. Let us walk.”

  “Walk?”

  “I find it helps me to think things through.”

  “There is nothing to think through. I want a leave of absence and I want some of the money I am owed for working here and—”

  “Yes, you will have your leave. I am not arguing against it. But there are other matters I wish to discuss with you and this”—he gestured around—“is not the right place in which to speak of them.”

  She hesitated. All her body and heart bent towards him, to go walking with him on this clear, sunny morning. But her brain warned her against it.

  “Come, Tilly. A short walk. Ten minutes. Then we will both get on with our days.”

  “Very well, then,” she said, trying to sound cool, as though her heart wasn’t thudding madly.

  They descended the front stairs and walked down the road, taking the path west, away from the stockade and down towards the little strip of beach. Sterling didn’t speak for a long time, maintaining a gruff bearing for any of the men they passed who called out good mornings. He walked swiftly and she had to hurry to keep up next to him, all the while sneaking glances at his face to see if she could guess what he intended to speak to her about.

  “Here is a good place to sit,” he said, indicating the flat rock at the beach where she and Nell often sat. He perched on the edge, but a small part of her wanted to defy him. She had walked all the way down here with him and now she wouldn’t sit. She chose instead to stand on the sand, facing out to sea.

  “Did you know Nell calls this Seven Yard Beach?” she said.

  “She does?”

  Tilly turned. “She has a map. She adds to it all the time. Everything is slowly acquiring a name.” She hid a little smile. “The escarpment is Sterling Cliff. She said it was a stern enough name for the place.”

  Sterling leaned forward, his hands folded between his knees, his gaze going out to sea. “Stern? She thinks I’m stern?” The waves were low today, rolling softly onto the gritty sand and breaking with a quiet shush. The air was thick with the smell of seaweed.

  “I don’t know. It’s what she said.”

  He shook his head. “I love that girl too much,” he said.

  “There is no such thing as too much love,” Tilly said, her voice growing hot. “One can’t measure or control it. One must simply feel it. It is the only moral thing to do.”

  Sterling said nothing for a long time, as her face cooled and she recomposed herself.

  She watched him watching the sea. A seagull went by overhead. The sun was in Sterling’s hair, the wind pushing it back off his face so she could see clearly the broad plane of his brow, the strong angle of his nose. She couldn’t remember ever finding any other face so pleasing to look upon, and it began to irritate her that he wouldn’t speak. As though he had brought her here just to put a spell on her with his lovely countenance.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “What is it you want to speak of?”

  “I am sorry, I . . .” he said, searching for words. His eyes were still on the water, squinting slightly against the glare. “I treated you ill. Last time we spoke, I realized that I had not apologized. Perhaps my apology will help you. I meant it when I said I wished to keep you as my friend. I miss our conversations, but currently you seem uninterested in conversing with me.”

  Tilly said nothing for fear she would cry.

  This time, he looked directly at her. His eyes were sad. “As a man, as an older man, in a position of responsibility, I should have been far more car
eful with you, your honor, your heart,” he continued. “I have said it before: living on this island feels as though we are outside society somehow. We spend so much time around people who have murdered or brutalized others, that our own behavior seems beyond reproach.”

  Still nothing.

  “Tilly? Speak to me.”

  “All I have heard here is that because you are a man you are more able than I am to know what is right, to protect my honor. And that our lovemaking was ill treatment and that falling in love with each other was somehow comparable to criminal behavior,” she said.

  “I said none of those things.”

  “You said all of them.”

  “You are twisting my words. Why must women be so . . . ?” He stopped himself, but he had already said the thing most likely to light her fuse.

  “Tilly, I miss you. But we can’t be together yet. We must be patient, we must control ourselves—”

  “I don’t want to control myself!” she shouted at him. Then she turned and ran back towards the house, leaving him on the beach alone.

  •

  Nell and Sterling both stood on the jetty to see her off. Nell, blithe to the underlying passions between her father and Tilly, was bright and excited.

  “Enjoy your holiday,” she enthused. “Buy yourself something pretty.”

  There was room enough in Tilly’s bag for a number of new dresses, but she wouldn’t be bringing dresses back for herself. “I will see you in a week or so,” Tilly said, kissing the girl’s forehead. “In the meantime, get to work on that new story.”

  “Good-bye, Tilly,” Sterling said. The sun was in his dark hair, on his skin. She saw lines around his eyes, a few gray strands in his sideburns. She longed to touch his face, kiss his lips.

  “Good-bye, Sterling,” she replied.

  He took Nell’s hand and they stood on the jetty while Tilly walked up the gangplank of the steamer. It bobbed on the morning tide. The sun glistened off the bay, which was blue-green today. The wet season had passed and the dry season, with its crisp sun and cool air, had finally come. She left her case downstairs and went up to the top of the boat to watch the jetty. They were still there, hand in hand. Nell waved at her with Pangur Ban. Sterling lifted his hand also, as the crew untied the ropes and the boat pulled away. They waved at her as though she were family.