She was right. Of course she was right. He had just admitted he could never do what Ezekiel wanted — find a white wife to give him sons for Overflow. For him it would be Rose, or no one else while she walked the earth. He had only to find Rose, tell her he had no life unless it was with her, so he was giving up nothing at all to marry her. And whatever she needed to be herself he would make sure she had, whatever freedoms must be fought from the grim ‘native policies’ of government regulation and corrupt policing.

It was possible.

‘All right,’ he said, as if it wasn’t the most momentous decision of his life.

‘You’ll find your Rose? Marry her?’

‘Yes. Even if I have to tie myself to her saddle till she agrees. And spend a year convincing the McKenzies . . .’ Though he realised too that as soon as he used the word ‘marriage’, all of McKenzie’s objections would vanish. He had found joy with his missus. McKenzie would have no doubt that Rose and Clancy would have the same.

Maria laughed, hoarsely, and obviously painfully as well, but still with joy. ‘I so wish that I could meet her. I wish . . .’

‘You would love her now, and she would love you. She knows plants, just like you. I wish you and she could have really known each other, back when she was a girl. Sometimes I think living with Father meant that so much of the time we were limited to what he could see.’ He could feel his whole face smiling at the memory of her, sitting at that last camp after she and Mrs McKenzie had killed the emu.

‘Rose knows everything: she can look at the springs or what plants are flowering and tell when it will rain and knows the swallows will appear again, no matter where we are in autumn or spring. Mrs McKenzie’s taught her a lot. She made a smoke for me once that took away my pain when I hurt my leg. No pain for three days, and after that I was hobbling again and riding . . .’ He stopped, wondering if, just possibly, Mrs McKenzie or Rose might know a plant that removed tumours. But it was too late for that for Maria. Too late for everything . . .

‘Promise me that you will go and find her, as soon as you leave here?’

‘I promise.’

He said the same words three days later, as Maria lay on the bed the servants had carried out for her, for she wanted her last breaths to be of eucalypt leaves and river song, not the sickroom. Vases all around were filled with strange wildflowers Ethelred and Tavy had somehow found, or caused to be brought there. Ethelred held her thin brown hands — far too tanned for polite society, this plant-mad wonderful sister of his — and smiled at her, refusing to acknowledge that he cried as well.