The Silk Thief (31 page)

‘I’m not surprised!’ Friday exclaimed. ‘She’s just been yanked away from everything she knows. She’s too young to understand why she can’t be with Janie and Rosie any more. Can we just have a little look?’

‘I can assure you our girls here are all very well cared for,’ Mrs Duff said.

Sarah asked, ‘Is she in a nursery?’

Glancing at a small carriage clock on the desk, Mrs Duff said, ‘Yes, it’s nap time. All the little ones will be asleep.’

‘May we have the tiniest glimpse?’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll feel so much better knowing she’s comfortable.’

Mrs Duff hesitated, then said, ‘I expect that won’t hurt. But, please, you must be quiet. If one wakes and cries, they’ll all cry.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Friday said.

‘Good. If you’d care to follow me.’

Mrs Duff led them up to the next floor, the leather soles of her boots squeaking on the polished wooden risers of the stairs.

Behind her Sarah whispered to Friday, ‘I’m warning you, don’t you dare do anything stupid.’

‘When do I ever do anything stupid?’

‘Just keep your mouth shut and behave.’

They passed several rooms in which sat groups of girls wearing blue dresses and white aprons, capes and caps. They all turned to scrutinise who was going past.

‘Are they at lessons?’ Sarah asked.

‘Yes, they’re learning to read and write so that they may properly understand and benefit from the Holy Scriptures,’ Mrs Duff said.

Friday deliberately avoided Sarah’s eye, knowing how much she utterly despised anything religious, particularly the Catholic church. She realised the orphan school was run by the Church of England, but suspected Sarah wouldn’t even be keen on Charlotte being cared for by Anglicans. They were all pretty much the same to her.

‘We also teach them the skills they’re likely to need in service, and to manage their own homes when they marry,’ Mrs Duff went on.

‘Needlework and what have you?’ Sarah said.

‘Yes, so that they may make their own clothes and linen. We also teach spinning and carding, cooking and baking, how to manage a dairy, and now and then they also work in the gardens. It’s useful for them to learn about growing vegetables for the kitchen, and it’s also very good exercise. By the time Charlotte leaves here when she turns thirteen she will make an excellent servant, and later on a handy wife.’

‘If my husband and I are unable to adopt her,’ Sarah reminded her.

‘Indeed.’

‘And all these girls are the children of convict women?’ Friday asked.

‘Most of them.’

They climbed a second staircase and traipsed down yet another corridor until they came to a door standing ajar. Mrs Duff cautiously pushed it open, then beckoned to Sarah and Friday.

Peering over her shoulder, which was especially easy for Friday as she was almost a foot taller than the matron, they saw a large room filled with a dozen white-painted baby’s cribs. In the middle a girl sat at a small table working on a piece of embroidery. Mrs Duff waved to attract her attention. She put down her needlework and glided over on silent feet.

‘Olive, these visitors are here to see Charlotte Winter. Which crib is hers?’

The girl indicated a crib barely ten feet away, containing a small child asleep on her back, her arms thrown above her head, the blanket kicked to the end of the mattress.

Unfortunately, Friday was just then suddenly overcome by a violent attack of coughing. The harsh gasping and hacking blasted around the room and one by one the babies woke up, including Charlotte. Her eyes watering, Friday raised her hand and waved at her.

Startled and disoriented, Charlotte immediately spotted Friday’s unmistakeable copper hair and scrambled to her knees, her pudgy little hands gripping the bars of the crib. ‘Fwiday!’ And then she saw Sarah. ‘Sawah! Sawah!’

‘Oh dear, I think she’s woken up,’ Friday croaked.

All around the room little tousled heads were popping up. A child started to cry. Then another, and another.

Mrs Duff glared at Friday.

Charlotte joined in, her mouth opening as wide as a frog’s and her voice winding up to a high-pitched wail, her brick-red face in startling contrast to her wispy, silver-white hair.

‘It’s all right, Mrs D, I know how to settle her,’ Friday said, and barged into the nursery.

She bent over Charlotte’s crib and picked her up, wrinkling her nose at the astringent whiff of wee rising from the mattress. The back of Charlotte’s gown was damp — Friday lifted it to see her soggy nappy sagging halfway down her legs.

‘Look at this. Her clout’s soaked and she stinks.’

‘Yes, well, Olive can’t attend to all of them at once,’ Mrs Duff said.

‘She wasn’t even in nappies during the day,’ Sarah said accusingly. ‘Janie had trained her on the pot.’

Friday cuddled Charlotte and rocked her, but it must have dawned on the little girl that Janie wasn’t with them because she started to cry out, ‘Mama! Mama!’ Her hands full, Friday was unable to wipe away the tears rolling down her face. She looked across at Sarah, who stepped into the room and held out her arms. Friday passed Charlotte to her.

‘Oh, you poor little thing,’ Sarah said, kissing the top of Charlotte’s head. ‘We’ll get you out soon, I promise.’

Distraught, Charlotte kept crying, her head on Sarah’s shoulder.

‘I must ask you to leave,’ Mrs Duff said. ‘The other children won’t settle while this one is carrying on.’

Friday turned on Mrs Duff. ‘She’s not “carrying on”, she’s heartbroken!’

‘I do understand how this situation may be upsetting for you. But Charlotte is a baby. She will adjust,’ Mrs Duff said. ‘However, someone must care for her, and for now that responsibility falls to this institution.’ She held out her arms for Charlotte. ‘Now, would you please leave so that Olive may settle the children. Olive, put Charlotte back in her crib.’

‘But first you can change her clout and that mattress. It reeks,’ Friday said to Olive, who nodded timorously, clearly unsure whether to obey the matron or Friday.

Sarah said, ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear from Lucas Carew. Thank you for your time, Mrs Duff.’ Then she swept imperiously from the nursery.

Friday had to trot to catch up with her, she was marching so determinedly down the corridor.

‘I don’t think she gives a shit about those babies,’ Sarah said once they were downstairs again.

‘Probably just run off her feet. Could be worse. She could have ended up in the workhouse.’

‘There aren’t any workhouses in New South Wales,’ Sarah said, yanking the front door open. ‘Didn’t I tell you to bloody well behave in there?’

Friday followed her outside. ‘Christ, what are we going to do about Lucas Carew’s name on the birth certificate?’

Jack had parked the landau in the shade of a tree: Sarah waved. ‘I’m buggered if I know. If Mrs Duff asks at the Factory, and I bet she bloody does, she’ll work out that Rachel was only three months along when we arrived, meaning she must have fallen pregnant on the
Isla
. And that means that, as far as she’s concerned, Lucas Carew was either a sailor or a passenger.’

‘We might get away with it. She could have got knapped just before we left London.’

‘In Newgate Gaol? No, all Mrs Duff has to do is look at the ship’s muster to see how long we were at sea, which was eighteen weeks. Rachel wasn’t four and a half months along. Sharpe would have put that in his records and he didn’t. Harrie told me he put three months.’

Friday was getting lost. ‘Which means?’

Clifford came racing across the grass and Sarah scooped her up. ‘Which means that if we say Lucas Carew was a sailor on the
Isla
, he’s likely to be at sea or Christ knows where by now, and that means we’ll have to wait forever until we can produce a forged letter from him saying he’s willing to forfeit his paternal rights to Charlotte.’

‘Oh.’

‘And if we say he was a passenger —’

‘Which bloody Keegan was,’ Friday interrupted.

‘Yes, but we’re not telling anyone
he
was Charlotte’s father. We were Rachel’s best friends. We can’t afford to have our names connected with his, not while his murder still hasn’t been solved.’

‘Christ, no.’

‘If we say Lucas Carew was a passenger, that means he’s probably, or at least possibly, living here in New South Wales. And Mrs Duff says if that’s the case, he needs to give his permission in person.’

‘Can’t we just say he’s dead or something?’

‘Maybe. Stop that,’ Sarah said as Clifford sniffed interestedly at the smell left on her bodice from Charlotte’s wet nappy. ‘But then we’d have to produce a death certificate.’

‘Would we? Really? Folk die all the time without a death certificate. He might have just disappeared.’

‘How did you go?’ Jack asked as they reached the carriage.

‘Not very well,’ Friday said. ‘And now I suppose we’ll have to tell Harrie.’

Neither Sarah nor Friday said much on the way back to Sydney, their spirits flat, both feeling drained and emotionally battered, and very much as though they’d been robbed of something precious.

By the time Sarah and Friday arrived at the Barretts’ later that night, Friday had consumed more than half a bottle of gin, but it hadn’t helped her to feel any better.

‘I’m not sure, now, if we should tell Harrie,’ she said as she climbed unsteadily down from the carriage.

Sarah jumped down after her. ‘Neither am I. It might be more than she can bear, after her mother. I think we should talk to Nora first.’ She walked around to the driver’s seat and offered up Clifford. ‘Jack …’

‘No.’ Jack tugged the leg of his trousers out of his boot, revealing several small puncture marks on his hairy calf. Sarah really had to squint to make them out in the darkness. ‘See what she did? She bloody well bit me.’

‘Well, if that’s how you’re going to be about it.’

‘It is, especially if you want me to deliver you home after this.’

Uppity bugger, Sarah thought, walking away, Clifford under her arm.

Friday knocked on the Barretts’ back door. When no one answered they thought perhaps everyone had gone to bed — it was quite late, after all — but eventually faint lamplight appeared in the downstairs window and they could hear someone coming down the stairs. Nora opened the door, Lewis, as usual, stuck to her hip.

‘Hello, girls. This is late.’

‘Yes, sorry,’ Friday said.

‘Harrie’s in bed. She’s had another bad day. How was your trip?’

‘Awful,’ Sarah said. ‘We need your advice. It’s about Harrie.’

‘Oh. Well, you’d better come in, then. Quietly, though, if you don’t mind. The children are asleep. That includes George. I’m only awake myself because Lewis won’t go down.’

‘Can I bring Clifford in?’ Sarah asked. ‘Jack’s outside with the carriage but he’s refusing to look after her.’

Nora eyed Clifford. ‘Is it house-trained? Will it bark?’

‘Yes, she is, and no, she won’t bark.’

‘I suppose so. Keep it off the furniture, though, please.’

They tiptoed up the creaky stairs behind Nora, her lamp casting tall shadows on the wall, and sat down in the parlour. Clifford turned around three times and flopped onto the rug at Sarah’s feet.

‘Have you had something to eat and drink?’ Nora asked.

Friday nodded.

‘Yes, I can tell you have.’

Sarah said, ‘We heard some very bad news today. They’ve had an outbreak of the bloody flux at the Factory. Janie and Rosie —’ Her voice broke and she started again. ‘Janie and Rosie died yesterday morning.’

Nora’s gasp was harsh in the quiet room. ‘They died!’

‘If we’d arrived an hour or so earlier, we could have attended the burials. They’re at St John’s.’

‘My God! And no one let you know?’

‘Janie’s friend Pearl sent a letter,’ Friday said, ‘but I hadn’t got it by the time we left this morning.’

‘And Charlotte? What about Charlotte?’

Sarah breathed out an enormous sigh. ‘Charlotte’s been taken to the Female Orphan School. There’s no one to look after her now. We went to see her before we left Parramatta.’

‘Is she all right?’

Sarah glanced at Friday, who said, ‘No, she isn’t. Not really. She cried when she saw us and she cried for Janie.’

Nora hoisted Lewis to her chest and rubbed her cheek against his fluffy hair. ‘Oh, the poor little thing. She must be feeling so lost.’

‘She is. It was heartbreaking,’ Sarah said.

‘We’re getting her out, though,’ Friday declared. ‘Sarah’s going to have a go at adopting her.’

Nora’s pale eyebrows went up. ‘Really? Can you do that? I would have thought with you being an assigned convict …’ She tailed off.

‘Adam has a conditional pardon. Anyway, I’m going to try.’

‘The thing is,’ Friday said, ‘what are we going to tell Harrie? She’ll be devastated. Or shall we not tell her anything right now?’

Clifford’s ears flicked up and she gave a tiny yap.

‘Tell me what?’ Harrie said from the hallway leading to the attic stairs.

‘Ah, shite,’ Sarah muttered.

Harrie moved into the circle of lamplight, her bare feet making no noise on the rug, her hair loose down her back. ‘Tell me what?’ she said again.

‘Go back to bed, love,’ Nora said. ‘It’s late.’

‘Why are you here?’ Harrie asked Friday and Sarah. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. We’re just having a quick cup of tea,’ Friday said, though there wasn’t a teacup in sight.

‘Don’t lie to me!’ Harrie said, her voice rising. ‘What’s happened? I know something’s happened. Tell me!’

Friday stood.

Sarah said, ‘Friday, no, don’t.’

Her gaze darting from Sarah to Friday and back again, Harrie demanded despairingly, ‘Is it Charlotte?’ She grabbed great handfuls of her own hair and began to tear at it. ‘It’s Charlotte, isn’t it?’

The door to the children’s bedroom opened and a little face peered out.

‘Close that door!’ Nora shouted at Abigail.

Friday rushed at Harrie and gripped her wrists. ‘No! It’s not Charlotte, I promise. Harrie? It’s not Charlotte, it’s Janie and Rosie.’

‘What about them?’ Harrie’s eyes were wild. ‘What’s
happened
?’

‘They … well, they died. They got sick and died.’