Beautiful as it was, it was sown in blood, as indeed we may say of the whole civilized structure of this island.

–Oline Keese, The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer, 1859

Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, 1842

With the Franklins’ departure date approaching, Hazel’s days were now spent packing linens into cedar chests, wrapping china in rags, cataloguing silverware and figurines, and filling wooden crates.

The convict maids were told that their employment would end when the Franklins embarked. The new governor might or might not use labor from the Cascades. It was often a surprise to newly arrived British gentry that convicts, not even ex-convicts, would be working in their homes, with convictions ranging from vagrancy to murder. But free-settler labor came with its own problems. You had to pay them, for one thing, and unlike a captive labor force, if they decided to walk off the job there wasn’t much you could do to stop them.

“Convicts are only permitted to visit their own children,” the warden at the Queen’s Orphan School told Hazel when she inquired about Mathinna. “Even that is a privilege.”

“But I was her maid at Governor Franklin’s residence,” she said, stretching the truth only a little.

“That is irrelevant.”

“I promised I’d visit. To make sure she’s all right.”

“If you continue to argue, you may be barred from seeing your own child as well.”

She tried one last tack: “I told the Franklins I’d keep an eye on her.”

“Unlikely. Besides, Lady Franklin was here only a few days ago,” the warden said with a dismissive wave.

Hazel was stunned. “She was? For what reason?”

“She didn’t say. Who knows, perhaps she’d . . . reconsidered. At any rate, the girl had so reverted to her natural savage state, in such a short amount of time, that Lady Franklin chose to leave without seeing her.”

“What do ye mean, her ‘savage state’?”

The warden shook his head, clucking his tongue. “It is a mistake to attempt to civilize the natives. The Franklins meant well, no doubt, but the result is a creature who possesses both the natural belligerence of her race and a rather unnatural precocity. Within the space of only a few days here she had become quite ungovernable. We had to separate her from the general population.”

“But she is only eleven years old.”

The warden shrugged. “It is a pity, but we had no alternative.”

Several Sundays later, when Hazel was waiting with a group of convict mothers at the front gate of the Cascades to begin their walk to the orphanage, the matron pulled her aside.

“The superintendent needs to see you at once.”

“But I’m going to visit my daughter.”

The matron didn’t reply; she simply turned toward the superintendent’s quarters. Hazel hesitated. But she knew she couldn’t disobey.

Inside his office, Mr. Hutchinson stood behind his desk. “We received an anonymous letter, Miss Ferguson, informing us that you are not who you purport to be.”

Her mind raced. Her head felt light. “Sir?”

“You are not the mother of the child you claim as your own.”

Hazel stopped breathing. “But ye have—ye have the birth certificate.” Her voice came out as a croak.

“Indeed we do. So we undertook an inquiry. The convicts and sailors we spoke with said that at no point during the crossing did you appear to be with child. A convict with whom you were frequently seen”—he moved his glasses down his nose as he consulted the sheet on the table in front of him—“a Miss Evangeline Stokes, was, in fact, due to give birth. And . . . where is . . .” He rifled around the desk. “Ah, yes. The death certificate. She was murdered, apparently. There was an investigation, and . . . yes, here it is. A crewman, Daniel Buck, was charged with the crime. He was confined on the ship and later sentenced to life in prison. You, Miss Ferguson, gave testimony as a witness.” He thrust the report toward her across the desk. “Is this your name?”

It was her name. She nodded.

“Did you not testify to what you saw?”

“Yes.” She bowed her head.

“Did you not report that you were present in the room when Miss Stokes gave birth to”—he consulted the sheet—“a ‘healthy female’?”

Hazel couldn’t speak. She stood before him, trembling.

“Well, prisoner?”

“I did,” she said quietly.

He set the report on a stack of papers. “The evidence is undeniable. You claimed the child in order to receive preferential treatment, to be allowed to stay with the infant instead of being sent out on assignment.”

Her heart was oozing now, dripping into a puddle. “I did it to save the baby’s life.”

“Did you nurse this child, prisoner?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Then you cannot claim that you saved her life. The woman—women, I suppose—who nursed her have more of a legitimate claim to her than you do.”

“But sir—”

“Do you deny these charges?”

“Please, let me explain.”

“Do you deny them, prisoner?”

“No, sir. But—”

The superintendent held up his hand. He looked at the matron, and then back at Hazel. “You are hereby sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in crime class, a fortnight of which will be spent in solitary confinement.”

“But . . . my daughter—”

“As we have established, the child is not your daughter. Your visiting rights are revoked.”

Hazel looked tearfully from the superintendent to the matron. How could this be happening?

Two guards grabbed her roughly by the upper arms and dragged her past the group of women she’d been standing with only a few minutes earlier, now staring at her open-mouthed.

“Please,” she blurted, “tell my daughter . . .” Her voice trailed off. Tell my daughter . . . what? That I’m not really her mother? That I might never see her again?

“Tell her that I love her,” she wept.

In the crime yard, the matron handed Hazel a spool of yellow thread and a needle and instructed her to embroider the letter C, for “crime class,” on her sleeve, the hem of her petticoat, and the back of her shift. Hazel sat on a barrel and bent her head over the task. It was hard pulling the thread through the coarse fabric, and she kept pricking her fingers. When she was finished, the yellow thread was smudged with blood. The matron motioned for her to stand. Two guards held Hazel’s arms while a third pulled out a large pair of scissors.

“Use care with this one,” the matron said. “Cut it cleanly.”

“What does it matter?” the one with the scissors said. “It’s only to be mixed with clay for bricks.”

The matron fingered Hazel’s thick, wavy hair. “I think it can be salvaged for a wig. Titian hair is in fashion these days, you know.”

The solitary cells were at the back of the crime yard, separated from the rest of the yard by a stone wall. The guards gave Hazel one sour-smelling, flea-ridden blanket and let her into a narrow cell with a grated open window above the door that let in a weak filtered light. They dropped a heavy bucket on the floor filled with oakum, a caulking compound used to plug holes in ships. Oakum was made of hemp rope, one of the guards explained, fused with tar and wax and crusted with salt. Hazel’s task was to separate the strands by loosening the coils, to unpick the fibers and toss them in a metal bucket. “Ye best get to work. If ye don’t unravel five pounds of this a day, you’ll be beaten with a rod,” he said.

The other guard tossed a heel of moldy bread on the floor. “If you’re standing when we open the door in the morning, you’ll be let out in the yard for a few minutes,” he told her as they left. “If you’re lyin’ down, you’ll be left in here all day.” They locked her inside with a skeleton key.

The cell was as cold and deathly quiet as a tomb. Shivering in her shawl against the stone wall in the darkness, Hazel pulled the greasy blanket around her shoulders. She heard the thwack of hammers and the echoey voices of male convicts in the next yard, working on the prison expansion. Smelled the residue of waste in the bucket in the corner, the mold creeping up the walls, her own monthly blood. She rubbed the oval disk around her neck, tracing the numbers with her finger: 1–7–1.

She thought of Ruby in the dormitory at the orphanage, waiting in vain for her to arrive. She thought of Mathinna, isolated in some dismal room. Evangeline as she fell to her death—a glimpse of gown, arms flailing in the air.

She’d been no good to any of them.

Hazel banged her head against the wall. She wailed and sobbed until a guard rapped on the door of her cell, telling her to quiet down or he’d make her quiet down.

In the morning, frost dusted her blanket. When she heard the clang of a bell and the clacking of locks being undone, she struggled to stand.