Mathinna was standing close to the hearth, warming her hands. “I thought they brought you in a cart.”

“They’re making us walk now. Say it’s good for us. Bloody torturers.”

Mathinna looked over at her. Hazel was as slight as a sapling, with wavy red hair pulled back under a white cap. Like the other convict maids, she wore a blue dress and white apron. “Have you been at the Cascades for long?”

“Not really. This is my first outplacement.” She rose from the chair and wrapped a rag around her hand, then went to the fireplace and lifted the iron out of the coals. “What’s your story, then?”

Mathinna shrugged.

The maid licked her finger and touched the iron’s flat surface before carrying it to the ironing board and setting it on a trivet. “Where’re your real mum and dad?”

“Dead.”

“Both of ’em?”

Mathinna nodded. “I have another father, though. He’s alive, I think. On Flinders.”

“Where’s that?”

She drew a line upward in the air with her finger. “A smaller island. Up north.”

“Ah. That’s where you’re from?”

“Yes. It’s a long way from here. I came on a boat.” Nobody had asked Mathinna these questions. Or any questions, really. Her answers felt strange in her mouth—they made her realize how little she’d told anyone about herself. How little most people wanted to know.

“You’re alone then, aren’t ye?” the maid said. “I mean, there are plenty of people here”—she gestured vaguely around them—“but no one’s really looking out for ye.”

“Well . . . Miss Eleanor.”

“Really?”

No, not really. Mathinna shook her head. She thought for a moment. “Sarah used to, I guess. But one day she stopped coming.”

“From the Cascades?”

Mathinna nodded.

“Hmm. Dark curly hair?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

The maid sighed. “Sarah Stoup. She’s in solitary. Caught drinking.”

“Oh. Does she have to pick tar out of rope?”

“How d’ye know about that?”

“She said it’s a horrid job. A good reason not to murder someone.”

“Well, she didn’t murder anybody. But they need that rope for the ships. They’ll use any excuse to make ye do it.” Plucking a napkin out of a basket at her feet, the maid said, “I could try to get a message to her, if ye want.”

“That’s all right. I don’t really . . . know her.”

The maid smoothed the napkin on the ironing board. “It’s hard being here. I’m from far away too. Across the ocean.”

“Like Miss Eleanor,” Mathinna said, thinking of the globe in the schoolroom, that wide expanse of blue.

She gave a dry laugh. “Miss Eleanor was on a different kind of ship.”

Mathinna liked this maid Hazel. She was the first person she’d met in this place who talked to her like a real person. Nodding at the jumbled linens in the basket, she said, “I could help you fold those.”

“Nah. It’s me job.”

Mathinna sighed. “I’ve finished my schoolwork. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I’ll get in trouble if I let ye.” Hazel pulled a pile of napkins out of the basket. “But . . . maybe later I could teach ye something. Like how to make a poultice. For if ye skin your knee.” She pointed at the bundled dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. “Ye start with mustard. Or rosemary. And grind it up with lard, maybe, or soft onions.”