Harris reached tentatively for Grace’s hand. “The crop is growing well. Better than I could have hoped in its first year.”
“You’re a farmer,” she said. “Just like you said you’d be.”
Harris smiled. “It helped to keep my mind off things,” he admitted. “Losing yourself in physical work helps you forget yourself a while.”
Nora clambered onto the paddock fence and leant over to touch one of the sheep. Grace waited for Harris to scold her— that’s not the way young ladies behave—but instead he smiled faintly. He had grown a little rough around the edges, she noticed. Marching about unshaven, his hair curling past his collar, rolled-up sleeves and no coat or hat. The thought brought a faint smile to her lips.
“I was so afraid you’d never see all this.” Harris stopped walking. “Gracie, I know I haven’t always treated you right and I’m sorry for it. More than you could know.”
Grace watched Nora edge her way along the fence. For a long time, she said nothing. “You’re ashamed of me,” she said finally. “The Wintermans...”
“Ashamed? No, Gracie.” He turned her to face him. “You weren't well. I didn't want those people judging you… I…” He pressed his lips against hers. “I love you. And as soon as you’re ready, I’m going to make you my wife for real.”
Grace felt her thoughts knock together. Unravelling. Untangling. She let Harris hold her. Felt her desire for him creep towards the surface.
“I shouldn’t have taken Violet out that day,” she said. “She was complaining her head hurt. I took my eyes off them for a second. They never ran away before.”
Harris turned to face her. There was kindness in his eyes. Sadness. “It wasn’t your fault. It was a terrible accident. That’s all. Please, Gracie, you have to believe that.”
She couldn’t look at him. “I’m so sorry, James. For Violet. For running away. For bringing those men here. I’m so sorry for everything.”
He said nothing, just combed his fingers through her hair, caressing her jagged curls with the same tenderness he had when they’d reached her waist.
“Violet is dead,” she said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“She drowned in the river. In London.”
Harris nodded.
“Violet never came to Hobart Town with us.”
“No. It was just the three of us.”
“She was with me, James. She was so real. I could see her, hear her. I carried her on my back. Plaited her hair.” How could she trust her eyes now? Her ears? Her hands? She ran her fingers over the smooth fence posts. Over the fabric of her skirt. Over the coarse skin on Harris’s knuckles. There was solidity to everything. It wasn’t enough. How was she to know where reality ended and dreaming began?
Harris pressed his forehead against hers. “I was a fool to leave so soon after her death. I know that now. I just thought it would be the best thing for all of us.”
She’d felt his hot breath against her skin like this, those terrible sleepless nights after Violet had died. Nights when he would climb to her attic room and slide into her bed. He’d said barely a word about his daughter, the way he had never spoken of Charlotte. But that one night, his blood hot with brandy and his cheeks wet with tears, he’d pulled her towards him. I don’t blame you, he’d said. And: I love you, Grace.
“She came back to you on the ship, didn’t she?” he asked. “That’s when you began to see her again.”
Yes. On the ship.
They’d been at sea, how long? Perhaps a fortnight, but already the days had begun to blur. After three days confined below decks, the sea had calmed enough for them to venture out. Grace held Nora’s hand as they climbed the ladder from their cabin to the deck. They stood in the sunlight, letting sea spray arch over their heads.
Nora gripped the gunwale, giggling and shrieking. Grace felt numb.
She had not let herself feel anything. Violet’s death, Harris’s impulsive proposal, a voyage away from all she knew. Blocking it out was the only way she could survive. This ship, this eternal sea, the great adventure Harris wouldn’t stop speaking of; it was all an illusion. A dream from which she’d one day surely wake.
Nora turned to Grace, her cheeks glittering. “I’m all wet, Nanny Grace!”
They’d been sweltering in the same clothes since London; much of their luggage packed into the hold. Grace had kept them clean as best she could, sponging their salty clothes each evening and draping them over the bunks to dry. She took Nora into their cabin and pulled out the small trunk they had stowed beneath the bunk. She found Nora’s fresh dress and helped her out of her wet clothes. Grace took her back onto deck with Harris and returned to the cabin to find her own dry things.
She rifled through the chest. A clean shirt and coat. Petticoat and drawers. And then, a flash of pink silk. Grace pushed the clothes aside curiously, peering at the unknown item. Whatever it was, Harris must have packed it himself. She lifted out the rose-coloured bundle. A pink shawl which had belonged to Charlotte. Wrapped inside was Violet’s rag doll.
Grace stared at the doll. It peered back at her with its one bewildered eye, its hair still in the lob-sided plait Violet had made the morning of the sideshow. Grace felt a great surge of grief well up inside her. She hadn’t known Harris was even aware of the doll’s existence.
In that chest was everything he was unable to say. All the sorrow he was unable to express. Grace saw then that Van Diemen’s Land wasn’t about adventure. It was about escape. A journey to the other side of the world in hope it might dull the pain of so much loss. Fifteen hundred acres so Harris might never again walk among the ghosts of his wife and daughter.
All her fault. The girls were her responsibility and she had failed them. Failed Charlotte and Nora and Harris. Most of all, she had failed Violet. The guilt was an unbearable, physical weight. She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. Just took the doll to her bunk and stayed there until she slept. In the morning, the girls came to find her. Two of them, hand in hand.
Get up, Nanny Grace. Come and see the mermaids.
Grace looked back at the house. The sandstone glowed gold in the sun. Each brick was flecked with the marks of the government man who had moulded it. Arrows, patterned scoring. A signature design for each convict so their labours might always be remembered.
She’d been convinced she’d visited this house. Convinced she’d crept inside and plucked Violet from her bed. But of course, it could never have been. When last she had been on this land, they had been living in a tent amongst nothing but foundations. Harris had taken her to New Norfolk so their new life might not be built on illusions.
“Tell me about the journey,” Alexander had said one night as they sat by the fire in the clearing. “From the asylum back to Hobart Town to get the girl. How did you find your way in the dark? Why did no one see you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She had lain awake that night and tried to sift through her memories. Days and nights of hills and mountains and tangled trees. She didn’t want to talk about the journey, she realised, because she remembered nothing of it.
Castor oil and laudanum, she had told herself. That’s why I don’t remember.
But now she saw the truth. She remembered nothing of the journey because it had never happened. She had run from the asylum straight into the forest and passed out from the drugs. When she had woken, Violet had been sleeping beside her.
Is that really what happened, Grace?
She’d taken Alexander’s words as an accusation. But now she saw with clarity. He’d just been trying to blow away the smoke in front of her eyes.
XXVIII
In the morning, she searched the city. Futile, she knew, but how could she just stand still and hope?
Harris walked beside her as she charged out of the farmland and down Campbell Street. Horses pulled coaches up the hill, sprays of brown earth flying from beneath their hooves. Outside the penitentiary, a gang of workers were being led into t
he city, arms laden with shovels and picks. Chains clattered around their ankles. They turned to watch Grace as she passed. She crossed the street and hurried away.
She wove through the streets towards the battery, calling Alexander’s name. Stopped at the bottom of the hill and looked out over the harbour. The sea glittered in the morning light. Whaling ships dotted the anchorage and people swarmed the wharf. Carts rolled between the docks and the markets. Rhythmic hammering came from the convicts building the warehouses in Salamanca Place.
Hobart Town felt different. Pulsing and vibrant as though a cloud Grace hadn’t been aware of had suddenly been lifted. Around her were sailors, convicts, soldiers. The city was noisy and smelled of the sea.
How vivid her memories of this place were; her boots crunching on the cobbles, Violet’s hand in hers. But there was a new haziness to these recollections, as though Violet knew she didn’t belong in the memories. As though she knew Grace had walked unaccompanied down the gangway of the Duckenfield. Slept alone on that bed of ferns. Whispered bedtime stories to empty shadows.
Grace followed the docks, squinting in the sun. A great ship lay at anchor off Hunter Island.
Enchantress, the signs at the ticket office announced. Hobart Town to London.
Imminent departure.
They walked wearily back to the house. Lost in her thoughts, Grace barely noticed the silence until Harris said: “Police.”
She stopped walking. Her chest tightened.
Harris strode up the front path. The two officers slid from their horses and looped the reins around the posts of the verandah.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said one. “We’re looking for Grace Ashwell.”
“I have told Doctor Barnes I do not wish to return my wife to the asylum at this time,” said Harris. “Thank you for your concern, gentlemen, but it’s unnecessary. She’s recovering well.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Go inside, Gracie. Everything’s all right.”
“I’m afraid we need to speak to her in regards to another matter,” said the sergeant. “The murder of two British marines and the escape of the convict Alexander Dalton.” He turned to Grace. “A word, Miss Ashwell, if you please.”
“This is mistake, surely,” said Harris. “A murder?”
“Is there somewhere we can speak in private?” asked the sergeant.
Grace’s heart pounded. “Of course. In the dining room—” She led the men inside and looked about her, flustered. “Where’s the dining room, James?”
Harris took her arm, holding her back. “You’ll not speak to her anywhere! My wife was not long ago a patient at New Norfolk asylum. She is no state to be interrogated by you!”
“Indeed. An escapee of New Norfolk, I believe.”
“It’s all right, James,” said Grace. “I want to speak to them. It’s all a mistake, ain’t it? Like you said. Best to be cleared up nice and quick. Now please, where’s the dining room?”
Harris led them resignedly down the hall. “I insist you let me stay with her. She is not of sound mind. She cannot be held responsible for her actions.”
“Very well.” The sergeant gestured to the chairs around the dining table. “Sit. Please.”
Grace strode up to him. “The things I said to the police in Hamilton, they were all lies. I didn’t know what I was saying. I— He never did any of them, I swear it. I—”
The sergeant cleared his throat and Grace fell silent. He nodded to the chair. “Sit, Miss Ashwell. You’ll speak when spoken to.”
She sat stiffly. “It’s Mrs Harris.” She reached beneath the table for Harris’s hand. “You don’t need to be here,” she murmured.
“Of course I do.”
Grace said nothing. She felt hot and sick, her skin damp beneath her bodice. She looked back at the policemen.
“The Richmond Police apprehended a couple for bushranging yesterday on the road to Launceston,” the sergeant began. “They gave us your name in exchange for a lesser sentence. Told us about your time in the Hamilton settlement and said you knew how to find Alexander Dalton.”
Grace felt a flush of anger. “They’re lying.”
“You sent the police after Dalton, did you not? You witnessed him kill two British marines. And you had reason to believe him responsible for the disappearance of Violet Harris.”
“I was wrong. He didn’t have nothing to do with that, you understand me?” She shook Harris’s wrist. “Tell them, James. Tell them what happened to Violet.”
“She’s telling the truth.” Harris’s voice was husky. “My daughter died in England a year and half ago.”
The sergeant gave him a fleeting glance. “My sympathies.” He walked slowly towards Grace. “Six days ago, members of the Clyde Field Police unearthed the bodies of two marines on the south bank of the Styx River. They were following the directions you provided them with on the twelfth of September this year.”
Heat flooded her. With the marines’ bodies found, Alexander was as good as hanged.
“These same policemen then apprehended Dalton, but he escaped into the bush.”
Grace felt the sergeant’s eyes on her, but refused to look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the garish floral walls. What god-awful taste in wallpaper James Harris had, she thought dully. “The man you caught,” she said, “the one you think is Alexander Dalton, he never killed no-one. He was just a free settler who liked his own space. I heard of those bolters from blasted Molly Finton at the asylum. She told me about the convict, Alexander Dalton, who disappeared in the bush all those years ago. But I’m telling you, the man I were with in Hamilton, that weren’t him. The madness in me made a monster of an innocent man.”
The policemen exchanged glances. Grace felt her story tangling. She drew in her breath. “They found a shawl buried with the marines. Grey wool with a hole in one corner.”
The sergeant nodded.
“That’s my shawl. The marines that got killed were sent to find me and put me back in the asylum.”
She cannot be held responsible for her actions.
She looked the sergeant in the eye. “I was the one that killed them. I weren’t of sound mind.”
“What?” demanded Harris. “What?”
The sergeant chuckled. “One of the marines died from a blow to the head,” he said. “An attack like that was not delivered by a woman your size. It was delivered by a man with military training, like Alexander Dalton.”
“Let me speak to her.” Harris pulled her to her feet. “I told you she’s not fit to be interviewed.”
“Mr Harris—”
“James,” Grace hissed. “Please.”
The sergeant stood, blocking the door. “It may also interest you to know we found traces of dirt inside the nose and mouth of one of the victims. He was still alive when he was buried. Were you aware of that?”
Grace’s stomach turned. She remembered the heat of the blood soaking through the shawl. Remembered the dull thuds as the bodies rolled into their graves.
“Alexander Dalton is one of the most troublesome convicts we’ve had in this colony, Mrs Harris. If you ask me, you’re lucky to have come away from this ordeal with your life. Are you aware of the horrific crime Dalton and his fellow escapees committed eleven years ago?”
Grace said nothing.
“I don’t know what in God’s name would possess you to protect him like this, but I can assure you that if you stand before a jury and claim to have murdered these soldiers, there’s not a man in the colony who will believe you. Perhaps you were not of sound mind when these men were killed, but your husband’s decision not to return you to New Norfolk suggests to me that you now are. Therefore you will be held fully accountable for any statements you make today.” He hovered over her. “Perjury in a double murder trial will get you a sentence at the Female Factory if you’re lucky. The hangman if you’re not. Although there’s always the chance the judge may see a lifetime of incarceration at New Norfolk as the most suitable sentence.”
Grac
e clenched her jaw. The sergeant stepped aside and let Harris pull her into the hallway.
“This is who you’re so desperate to find?” he hissed. “This is who was in my home?” He stood close, his voice low and taut. “You told me you’d been in Hamilton with the couple that brought you to Hobart Town. And now I hear you’ve been out in the wilderness with this madman? And that men have been murdered?”
She turned away from his furious eyes. “I knew what you’d think if I told you.”
“What I’d think? Grace, I’ve no idea what to think. Why in God’s name are you protecting this animal?”
“He saved my life, James. Several times over. And I sent the police after him for Violet’s murder.”
“He deserves to be hanged!”
“I can’t just turn him in after all he did for me!”
“It’s too late. You’ve already turned him in. And if he truly killed these soldiers, you were right to do it. Lying for him now can’t save him. It will only bring you both down.”
Tears spilled suddenly down Grace’s cheeks. “It can save him. It can. If I’m found guilty of these murders, I can’t be punished.”
“The only thing they’re going to find you guilty of is perjury. Nora and I have just got you back. Are we to lose you again because you hold yourself responsible for the actions of some degraded convict? If this is what you believe is right, then I fear I’ve brought you home too soon. Perhaps I ought to send you back to New Norfolk.”
“No.” She wiped away her tears away with the back of her hand. “I carry Violet’s death with me every minute. I couldn’t bear to carry Alexander’s as well. I can use this madness to save him. Let a little good come from all that’s happened.”
For a moment, Harris said nothing. He stood close, his breath fast and hot against her nose. “I understand,” he said, his anger fading slightly. “Truly. But you won’t escape your guilt this way. You’ll escape it by being a good mother to Nora. By letting us finally start our life out here. Don’t we deserve that? After all we’ve been through?”
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