In this strange new place Waluka clung to Mathinna. His own fear raised in her a protectiveness that calmed her. He spent most of the day sleeping in a wide pocket of her pinafore, but climbed out now and then to make his way up to her neck, where he nestled against her, nuzzling her with his wet nose. In the evenings she was expected to put him in a cage that was brought to her room for that purpose, but after shutting the door and blowing out the candle, she unlatched the cage and let Waluka run across the floor to the bed.

She spent as little time as possible in her bedroom, with its boarded-up window and looming candle-made shadows. On mild days, when she wasn’t with Eleanor in the schoolroom, she rambled around the cobbled courtyard with Waluka in her pocket, watching the stablemen brush and feed the horses, scratching the backs of the hogs in the piggery and listening to the gossip between the convict maids as they scrubbed laundry and hung it on the clothesline behind the house.

It was generally agreed that Lady Franklin possessed the brains and the ambition to rule this unruly colony, while Sir John, with his knighthood, provided the status. The maids spoke of him with a kind of benevolent contempt. In their eyes, Sir John was a foolish man, constantly getting himself into trouble and barely getting himself out. They recounted endless stories about his haplessness, such as the time he’d charged out of the house shouting for the carriage with his face half shaved and half lathered. They scoffed at how he combed his few remaining strands of hair across the top of his head. They tittered at how comical he appeared on horseback, with his stomach bulging over his trousers, the buttons on his waistcoat straining at the seams.

Sir John had achieved fame as an explorer, but each voyage he’d led was more calamitous than the last. There was one expedition to northern Canada that ended in survivors eating their own boots and possibly each other, and another to the Arctic Circle that grew increasingly dire before the remaining few gave up and fled back to England. Only after a vigorous marketing campaign by Lady Franklin was he rewarded with a knighthood for these failed attempts.

Lady Franklin’s treatment of Eleanor was another source of amusement. Eleanor was the product of Sir John’s first marriage to a woman who’d died tragically young; Lady Franklin, who had no children of her own, tolerated her with barely concealed impatience. When she couldn’t avoid Eleanor, she poked at her with criticism masquerading as concern. “Are you quite well? You’re frightfully pale.” “Dear girl, that dress is so unflattering! I must have a word with the seamstress.”

Mathinna saw this for herself one day when she and Eleanor passed Lady Franklin in the corridor. “Posture, Eleanor,” Lady Franklin said, barely breaking stride. “You don’t want to be mistaken for a scullery maid.”