Mrs. Wilson, her hands on her ample hips, gave Sarah a hard look. “Did you find lice? Any sign of scurvy?”

Sarah shook her head. “Fit as a butcher’s dog.”

Mrs. Wilson gestured for Mathinna to sit at the table, then slid a plate of food in front of her. Mathinna stared at it. Purplish fish, wobbly in its gelatin, and cold white potatoes.

“Eat up,” Mrs. Wilson said, tying a napkin around Mathinna’s neck. “I don’t abide finicky appetites in my kitchen.”

Sarah squeezed Mathinna’s shoulder. “Do as she says and be quick about it. I barely have time to take ye to your room before you’re to see Lady Franklin.”

Mathinna choked down a few bites of the bland, slippery food, swallowing quickly to avoid the taste and texture. Then she followed Sarah down a long corridor in the main house, past half a dozen rooms that appeared both overstuffed and strangely empty. Tall silver candleholders rose from pedestals like writhing tiger snakes, blue-and-white china vases bloomed with lilacs, brocaded draperies puddled on carpets. Powder-white faces peered down from gilded frames. The gold and green tendrils of the wallpaper in the corridor reminded Mathinna of the scrolls of smoke the Palawa elders blew from their mouths as they sat around the fire.

At the end of the hallway, Sarah opened a door that led to a back staircase, and up they went. The walls were bare and white. “The schoolroom,” she said as they passed a room with a chalkboard on an easel, a table and chairs, and a small bookcase. The next two doors were closed. At the second one, Sarah stopped and turned the white porcelain knob.

In the light from the hall Mathinna could make out a narrow bed covered with a faded red blanket, a tall armoire, and a small pine desk and wooden stool. The room was dark. Following Sarah inside, she went to the window, expecting to find a drawn shade or closed curtain. When a light bloomed behind her, she saw that four wide planks were nailed across the window frame.

She turned to Sarah in surprise.

Sarah blew out the match she’d used to light an oil lamp on the wall. “It was Lady Franklin’s orders to shield ye from the view. She read somewhere that natives feel a painful longing for the wilderness from whence they came. That without sight of it, you’ll be less . . . homesick.”

Mathinna stared at her. “I must live here in the dark?”

“It seems strange, I know. But perhaps you’ll come to find this room quite . . . restful.”

Mathinna couldn’t help it; her eyes welled with tears.

Sarah bit her lip. “Look . . . I’ll leave some candles for ye, but ye must be careful. The last one wasn’t, and he nearly burnt the house down.”

“Do you mean Timeo?”

She nodded. “He left only a few months ago.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Why?” Sarah shrugged. “Lady Franklin tired of him, that’s why.”