“You’ll be reported missing and add years to your sentence, is that what ye want?”

All night, on her hammock, Hazel tossed and turned. The next morning, she was the first one up the hill, the first in the door at the nursery. Ruby was all right, but another infant in her crib, a boy, had died in the night.

“Where’s his mother?” Hazel asked the guard when the body was taken away.

“A lot of ’em never show up,” he said. “They prefer to serve their time in the crime yard and move on. Can’t say I blame ’em.”

Even many of the ones who did show up, Hazel noticed, were listless, blank-eyed and gray-faced, turned in on themselves. Some barely looked at their babies.

The boy who died would be buried in a children’s cemetery at the corner of Harrington and Davey Streets, the guard told Hazel, in a gumwood crate. They’d wait until the end of the day, in case there were more.

That evening Hazel found Olive in the main courtyard with Liza, the crooked accountant, and some newfound friends. “Can we talk?”

“What d’ye need?”

Hazel got straight to the point. “Ye have to feed her, Olive.”

“I told ye, I don’t want to nurse six piglets.”

“Ye can tell the doctor ye only have enough milk for one.”

She shook her head. “I heard it’s disgusting over there.”

“Ruby’ll die if ye don’t.”

“You’re a regular Chicken Little, aren’t ye, Hazel?” Olive shook her arms in the air in mock panic.

The women around her laughed.

“I’m begging ye,” Hazel said, ignoring them. She took a breath. “Think of Evangeline.” It was shameless to evoke their dead friend’s name, she knew. But Hazel had no shame. “Babies die every day in that place, and they’re dumped in a mass grave to rot. They’re not even given a proper funeral.”

Olive gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, rolling her eyes.

But the next morning, and each morning after that, when Hazel showed up in the courtyard, there Olive was, waiting with the other wet nurses and new mothers to walk to the nursery.

One day, walking beside Olive up Macquarie Street, Hazel spied a clump of sage by the side of the road and hurried over from her place in the line to pluck some leaves. As she was twining the leaves together and tucking them into her apron pocket, the convict behind her asked, “What’re ye doing with that?”

Hazel turned around. It was the woman with the white braid she’d seen in the courtyard when they arrived. “I’ll make a poultice,” she said. “For rash.”

“Ye know your milk is good for that,” the woman said.

Hazel glanced at Olive, who snorted. “I suppose I’m a walking miracle cure.”

This old woman was not a new mother or a wet nurse. “Are ye a midwife?” Hazel asked.

“I am. You?”

Hazel nodded.

“Working in the nursery isn’t much of a prize for anyone, but I thought I could be of use. Most convicts in the birthing rooms and the nursery have no experience. I do.”

Her name was Maeve, she said. Maeve Logan. She hailed from a landlocked part of Ireland called Roscommon. She’d always been outspoken, mouthy with complaint; some even accused her of being a witch, and maybe she was. Her landlord had died a day after she cursed him for starving his tenants. Though there was no evidence she had anything to do with it, she was charged with insurrection. Seven years. She’d been on Van Diemen’s Land for four.

Over the next few weeks, while Olive was with Ruby, Hazel began working with Maeve to improve conditions at the nursery. They boiled water to wash the linens and took them outside to scrub. They mopped the floors. To reduce fever, they bathed babies in water with lemon; for hives, they made a tea out of catnip. Maeve taught Hazel to identify local plants and showed her how to use them: Bark from the black peppermint tree could be brewed into tea for fevers and headaches. Sap from the white gum was good for burns. Juice from the hop bush plant soothed toothaches. Nectar from leatherwood flowers treated infections and other wounds.

Some of the native plants were dangerous—and dangerously tempting. In small quantities they produced a pleasant sensation, but if misused they caused hallucinations, or even death: yellow oil from the sassafras tree, the combination of ingredients that made up absinthe—wormwood, hyssop, anise seed, and fennel, marinated in brandy. Maeve pointed out a bush along the side of the road with fluted pale pink flowers hanging upside down. “Angel’s trumpet. Beautiful, in’it? Eating these flowers makes your troubles go away. Problem is, too much will kill ye.” She laughed. “It got its name because it’s the last thing you’ll see before ascending into heaven.”

Life at the Cascades, Hazel learned, was all about waiting in line. The women queued for their daily pound of bread and pint of gruel for breakfast, their pint of mutton soup at midday, and their oxtail soup thickened with old vegetables for supper. They queued for chapel and queued for assignment. At Sunday muster, they queued in the second yard, facing the wall, to be roughly searched for contraband.

The prison had been built for 250 women and now held more than 450. There were only eight staff members, which meant both that the convicts got away with a lot and that they were punished severely if caught. Convicts smuggled in rum and wine traded for favors while on assignment. They buried tobacco and pipes, tea and biscuits beside the washtubs and behind bricks in the yard. The weaker prisoners—those who were small or sick, or had lost a child, or were depressed, or not right in the head—were overpowered by the strong, who stole their rations and anything else they could get their hands on. On the ship, as unpleasant as it was, convicts had only been punished if they caused a fight or disruption. Here, you could be thrown into the crime yard for the flimsiest of reasons: for picking up a heel of bread that had been tossed over the fence, for singing or bartering, for getting caught with rum.

A few of them escaped—or at least there were rumors. Two women supposedly used sharpened spoons to tunnel out of solitary. Another, it was said, tore her blanket into strips and knotted them to make a rope to scale the stone wall. But most women didn’t risk it. They served their time quietly, hoping to gain their freedom before they were too old or sick to enjoy it.

One Sunday at muster the superintendent announced that an expansion was going to be built, a second crime yard with more than a hundred new cells, in two rows of double-tiered cellblocks. Two days later a work crew arrived, made up of male convicts from prisons all over the island. With men regularly in the factory now, the women had access to gin, rum, tea, and sugar, which they exchanged for favors and fresh bread baked in the cookhouse.

Olive took up with an unruly group of convicts who called themselves the Flash Mob. These women smuggled in grog, tobacco, tea, and sugar in coal bins or tied to brooms tossed over the walls. They paraded about in contraband silk scarves and pantaloons; they swore openly and drank until they were senseless. Defying the superintendent’s orders, they sang bawdy songs in the full-throated voices of men and called to each other across the courtyard. They ridiculed the chaplain, jeering and gesturing as he passed: “Hey, Holy Willie, want some of this?” They got away with more than they were nabbed for, but even so, many of them drifted in and out of the crime yard, shrugging it off as a small price to pay for their revelry.

Olive and Liza, the crooked accountant from the ship, had become inseparable. They emboldened each other. Olive altered her uniform, trimming and tying and hemming it to show more cleavage and leg. Liza painted her lips with berry juice and rimmed her eyes with charcoal. They nuzzled each other’s necks in the courtyard and pinched each other’s backsides when the guards’ backs were turned. By bribing a susceptible guard, they even managed to sleep together in the same bed.

One afternoon, when several dozen members of the Flash Mob were singing and dancing loudly in yard one, the matron arrived, flush-faced, to see what the commotion was about.

“Who is the ringleader?” she demanded.

Usually the Flash Mob fell silent when the matron showed up, but this time they did not. They squatted on the floor, hooting and stamping their feet, chanting, “We are all alike, we are all alike, we are all alike.”

“This is your chance to declare that you are not a member of a mob,” Mrs. Hutchinson shouted. “Every one of you risks severe punishment!”

The women yelled and clapped and clacked their tongues.

In the chaos of the moment, Olive managed to slip out of sight. But nine convicts were sentenced to the crime yard for six months, with a month in solitary after that, and two of the instigators had years added to their time.

Hazel watched from a distance. She wasn’t interested in getting away with anything. Her only goal was to earn her ticket of leave as early as she could for good behavior, like some women did, and make a new life for herself and Ruby, somewhere safe and free.