Mathinna helped her clean up the mess. They dumped the wet towels in the sink, mopped the floor in front of the hearth, and cleared the table. When they were finished, Mrs. Wilson said, “Now where did that creature of yours get off to?”

Instinctively Mathinna reached up to her neck, but of course Waluka wasn’t there. He must’ve slid away when she sprang to her feet, but she had no memory of it. She looked in the rush basket, under the old wooden cupboard, behind the breakfront where the bowls were kept.

“Hiding in a corner, no doubt,” Mrs. Wilson assured her.

But he wasn’t.

Mathinna felt a sudden coldness—a sickening alarm. Waluka didn’t stray. He was afraid of everything. But the fire . . . the tumult . . . Her gaze drifted toward the doorway, which Mrs. Wilson had thrown wide when the room filled with smoke. She could make out something . . . something in the courtyard.

She moved as if in a trance through the doorway and out into the cold air. As she got closer, stumbling over the cobblestones, her eyes fixed on the small white lump.

Matted fur, a trickle of red.

No . . .

When she reached it, she collapsed on her knees. She touched the soft body, slick with something viscous. It was broken and bloody, its eyes dull, half open.

She heard a low growl, and then a shout: “Move away!” She looked up, her vision murky with tears. Montagu’s dog was charging toward her, nose down, trailing a chain that clanged along the cobbles, Montagu waving madly behind it. “Bloody hell, get away from that thing or Jip will eat you too!”

Mathinna lifted the small possum, cradling him in both hands. He was still warm. “Waluka, Waluka,” she keened, rocking back and forth. When the dog bounded up, snarling, she staggered to her feet and lunged at it, baring her own teeth. A guttural howl traveled up through her body until she vibrated with it. She howled until the dog backed away and the convict maids dropped their baskets; until Mrs. Crain burst through the servants’ door of the main house and Mrs. Wilson came running across the courtyard; until even Lady Franklin emerged on the balcony above the green drawing room, with a look of mild annoyance, to see what all the fuss was about.

For months, Mathinna felt the ghost of Waluka’s presence. The weight of his body on her shoulders, his soft, warm belly and shallow breath against her neck. The tap of his paws on her skin when he ran up the length of one arm and down the other. The bony ridge of his spine as he lay next to her in bed. The possum had been her only remaining link to Flinders—his beating heart linking her to her mother, her father, Palle, the elders around the fire. And now that heart was still.

So many losses piled up, one on top of the other, each tamping down the last. Her chest heavy with the weight of them.

“Maybe it was for the best,” Lady Franklin told her. “A wild animal like that isn’t meant to be domesticated.”

Well, maybe Lady Jane was right. Maybe it was for the best. Without him, perhaps she could finally leave Flinders behind, tuck away her few remaining memories and embrace her role as the girl in the portrait in the red satin dress. It would be a relief, she thought, to let it go. She’d become accustomed to stiff shoes; she ate aspic without complaint. She conversed in French and kept track of dates on a calendar. She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.

Hazel

As to the females, it is a melancholy fact, but not the less true, that far the greater proportion are utterly irreclaimable,

being the most worthless and abandoned of human beings! No kindness can conciliate them, nor any indulgence render them grateful;

and it is admitted by everyone, that they are, taken as a body, infinitely worse than males!

—Lieutenant Breton, Excursions in New South Wales, Western Australia and Van Diemen’s Land During the Years 1830, 1831, 1832, and 1833

Medea, 1840

What Hazel remembered most vividly—what she would always remember—was the hem of Evangeline’s gown as she hovered on the railing, her arms flailing in the air. Her disbelieving shriek as she tumbled overboard. The cold rage on Buck’s face when he turned, startled by Hazel’s scream. The quickening in her chest, the disorienting horror.

After that, all was chaos. The surgeon yelling behind her, two crewmen rushing to apprehend Buck, two others peering over the side. Dunne stripping off his jacket, preparing to jump, and the captain’s shouted reprimand: “Dr. Dunne! Stand down, sir.”

“One of the crew, then,” Dunne said. “An experienced swimmer—”

“I will require no man to risk his life for a convict.”

Hazel and Dunne stayed on the deck for what felt like hours after everyone else had left, standing wordless, helpless, at the railing, scanning the glittery water. Was that a floating cloth, just under the surface? A glimpse of hair?

The sea, blackly silent, gave up nothing. No sign of her. Evangeline was gone.

For months, years, afterward, Hazel would dream of Evangeline underwater. The fathomless silence. The absence of sound.

A tinny wail rose from the tween deck.

Hazel and Dunne looked at each other. The baby. They’d forgotten about the baby.

In the surgeon’s quarters, Hazel held the swaddled infant close to her chest, trying to soothe her. “She needs to be fed.”

“Goats’ milk will do. We can mix it with water and a little sugar.”

“Mothers’ milk is better.”

“Of course it is, but . . .”

Wet nurses were common in Glasgow, where the infant mortality rate was high and mothers of dead children learned that they could at least earn money from their misery. But there were no wet nurses on the ship.

Hazel looked at Dunne wordlessly. Olive had given birth less than a week earlier. He nodded: he’d had the same thought. Yes, it was worth a try.

Dunne found a crewman to unbolt the orlop deck. Carrying a candle, Hazel made her way down the narrow corridor to Olive’s berth. Since Olive had lost her baby, she’d been glum and withdrawn. She’d abandoned her sailor’s bed and crept back to her own like an animal licking its wounds. Now she lay hunched under the covers and facing the wall, lightly snoring.

Hazel tapped her back. When there was no response, she tugged her shoulder.

Olive turned toward her. “Fer Chrissakes, what.”

“You’re needed.”

Olive turned. The flickering candlelight cast ghoulish shadows on her face. She peered closer at Hazel. “Are ye . . . crying?”

“It’s—it’s Evangeline.”

Olive didn’t ask any questions. She hoisted herself off the bunk, dragging her blanket with her and pulling it around her shoulders like a cape, and followed Hazel past the rows of sleeping women, up the swaying ladder and into the surgeon’s quarters.

At the sight of Dunne cradling the infant, Olive stopped in her tracks.

“It’s hers,” Hazel said.

“I didn’t know she was ready to—”

“You’ve been a bit preoccupied.”

Olive looked back and forth between them. “Where is she, then?”

There was no easy way to say it. “She’s gone, Olive,” Hazel said.

“Gone?”

It was still so unfathomable to Hazel that she hardly believed it herself. “Buck pushed her over the side.”

Olive looked at Dunne, as if asking him to dispute it.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” he said.

“No.” Olive placed a hand to her forehead.

“She went under and never came up.” He swallowed. “I wanted to go after her, but . . .”

Tears glinted in Olive’s eyes. “No need to explain.”

For a moment all of them were quiet, trying to absorb the enormity of it. Evangeline had been here, and now she was gone. Her life had such little value that the ship wouldn’t even attempt a rescue.

Olive sniffed. Wiping a tear with the back of her hand, she said, “To hell with all of ’em.”

The baby, in the surgeon’s arms, gave a lamblike bleat.

Dunne glanced at Hazel, then back at Olive. “The child is hungry. She needs a wet nurse.”

She squinted at him.

“I thought—well, Hazel and I wondered—”

“It’s a girl,” Olive said.

“Yes.”

“Ye want me to feed it. Her.”

“Yes.”

With a hard look at Dunne, Olive said, “Ye couldn’t save my baby but now ye want me to save Evangeline’s?”

He pressed his lips together. There was no answer to that.

“It’s all terrible, Olive,” Hazel said.

Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t think I can.”

“But—”

“Ye shouldn’t ask me to. Babies survive without mothers’ milk, don’t they?”

“Some do,” Dunne said. “Many don’t.”

Hazel knew that Olive genuinely cared for Evangeline. And yet, like Hazel’s mother, her top priority was her own survival. “I know it won’t be easy. But . . . you’d get extra perks,” Hazel said, glancing at Dunne.

He nodded. “Better rations.”

“Me sailor gets me those.”

“You’d never scrub the deck again.”

Olive gave a short laugh. “I weasel out of chores as it is.” She cleared her throat. “Look. I would help. I would. But me sailor wants me back. And he would not take kindly to an infant in his bed.”

“Ye don’t need to keep the baby,” Hazel said. “Just feed her now and then.”