Hazel followed the housekeeper out onto the street, toward a horse-drawn open carriage with bright blue seats. Mount Wellington, looming above, was blanketed with snow.

“You’ll sit across from me today,” Mrs. Crain said brusquely. “Starting tomorrow, you will travel in a cart with the other convict maids before sunrise.”

Hazel hadn’t been in a proper carriage since she was six years old, visiting the seaside village of Troon, on the only holiday she’d ever taken with her mother. There’d been another person, a man, in the carriage. His breath had smelled of alcohol and he kept putting his hand on her mother’s knee. Her mother had promised that she and Hazel would share crumpets and cream cakes at a tea shop and take long walks along the scenic shore, but as it turned out, Hazel spent a lot of time shivering on the windy beach alone while her mother and her new friend were “exploring the shops,” as her mother put it.

One more disappointment. But the carriage was nice, as Hazel remembered.

Now she sat beside Mrs. Crain, trying not to shiver in her shawl.

The horses trotted briskly along Macquarie Street before turning down a long driveway lined with gum trees. They came to a stop in front of a stately sandstone building with two curving staircases that led to the front door. Hazel followed Mrs. Crain to the servants’ quarters, where, she was told, she would change clothes before and after her shifts. Blue cotton dresses for the convict maids to wear hung on a pole; aprons, caps, clean undergarments, and stockings were folded on shelves. Mrs. Crain showed Hazel where to wash her face and hands before beginning work each day, and gave her a comb—which the convicts weren’t allowed at the prison—to part her hair in the middle before tying it back and securing her cap on her head.

A convict maid must always be busy, Mrs. Crain said. She must not gossip or laugh loudly or sit down, unless she is mending clothing or polishing silver. “You are expressly forbidden from opening the front door; that is the butler’s job,” she said as she took Hazel through the house. “You may not talk directly to any member of the Franklin family or their visitors. You will use the back staircases and hallways. As much as possible, you must stay out of sight.”

Two of the maids Hazel spoke with later in the morning offered a different sort of advice. Sometimes Sir John grabbed you when and where you least expected it, so you had to stay alert. Lady Franklin blamed anything that went wrong on the staff. Miss Eleanor was not very bright and could be demanding: once she insisted that a convict maid stay awake all night to hem a dress she might wear to a party. (And ended up wearing a different one.) They also told Hazel that the Franklins had taken in a native girl as a strange kind of experiment. She lived in the nursery. One of Lady Franklin’s whims.