Mrs. Wilson was in a foul mood, grousing about the day’s delivery, a random collection of ingredients that even a seasoned cook like herself was hard pressed to turn into dinner. “Turnips and gristle!” She bustled around the small space like a hedgehog in its burrow. “What the good Lord am I expected to do with that?” Rooting around in baskets, she found celery root and a few limp carrots. “Suppose I’ll make a turnip pudding,” she muttered, “and some crackling from this sorry excuse for a roast.”
Mathinna sat in a corner of the kitchen, as she often did, working on a floral needlepoint of dark green leaves and pink trumpet-shaped flowers. Waluka lay curled around her shoulders, his hot-water-bottle belly against her neck. She watched as Mrs. Wilson gathered ingredients, slapping lard into a cast-iron skillet, shaving bits of fatty meat off the hunk in front of her and tossing them into the pan. A maid came in with Lady Franklin’s tray from lunch, which only exasperated the cook further. “Don’t stand there gawping. Give that here! Move along!” She cleared a space on the crowded table, plunked down the messy tray, and shooed the maid out the door.
Neither she nor Mathinna noticed that spatters of lard, sloppily thrown toward the skillet, had landed on the coals and ignited a fire. The room filled with smoke.
Mrs. Wilson let out a cry and flapped her arms. “Don’t just sit there, child. Help me!”
Mathinna leapt to her feet. A spear of flame had jumped from the hearth to the wall and now lapped at a hand towel hanging to dry. She started to ladle water out of the barrel, then, realizing it was taking too long, grabbed a pile of dishtowels and dumped them into the water. She handed the dripping towels one by one to Mrs. Wilson, who used them to bat at the flames. When the towels ran out, Mathinna scooped water from the barrel with a small bowl and flung it toward the hearth. It was several minutes before the two of them, working feverishly, were able to extinguish the fire.
When it was finally out, they stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by clumps of soggy towels, surveying the now-even-blacker wall above the fireplace. Mrs. Wilson sighed, patting her bosom. “Good thinking, you. It’s lucky I have a kitchen left to cook in.”
Mathinna helped her clean up the mess. They dumped the wet towels in the sink, mopped the floor in front of the hearth, and cleared the table. When they were finished, Mrs. Wilson said, “Now where did that creature of yours get off to?”
Instinctively Mathinna reached up to her neck, but of course Waluka wasn’t there. He must’ve slid away when she sprang to her feet, but she had no memory of it. She looked in the rush basket, under the old wooden cupboard, behind the breakfront where the bowls were kept.
“Hiding in a corner, no doubt,” Mrs. Wilson assured her.
But he wasn’t.
Mathinna felt a sudden coldness—a sickening alarm. Waluka didn’t stray. He was afraid of everything. But the fire . . . the tumult . . . Her gaze drifted toward the doorway, which Mrs. Wilson had thrown wide when the room filled with smoke. She could make out something . . . something in the courtyard.
She moved as if in a trance through the doorway and out into the cold air. As she got closer, stumbling over the cobblestones, her eyes fixed on the small white lump.
Matted fur, a trickle of red.
No . . .
When she reached it, she collapsed on her knees. She touched the soft body, slick with something viscous. It was broken and bloody, its eyes dull, half open.
She heard a low growl, and then a shout: “Move away!” She looked up, her vision murky with tears. Montagu’s dog was charging toward her, nose down, trailing a chain that clanged along the cobbles, Montagu waving madly behind it. “Bloody hell, get away from that thing or Jip will eat you too!”
Mathinna lifted the small possum, cradling him in both hands. He was still warm. “Waluka, Waluka,” she keened, rocking back and forth. When the dog bounded up, snarling, she staggered to her feet and lunged at it, baring her own teeth. A guttural howl traveled up through her body until she vibrated with it. She howled until the dog backed away and the convict maids dropped their baskets; until Mrs. Crain burst through the servants’ door of the main house and Mrs. Wilson came running across the courtyard; until even Lady Franklin emerged on the balcony above the green drawing room, with a look of mild annoyance, to see what all the fuss was about.
For months, Mathinna felt the ghost of Waluka’s presence. The weight of his body on her shoulders, his soft, warm belly and shallow breath against her neck. The tap of his paws on her skin when he ran up the length of one arm and down the other. The bony ridge of his spine as he lay next to her in bed. The possum had been her only remaining link to Flinders—his beating heart linking her to her mother, her father, Palle, the elders around the fire. And now that heart was still.
So many losses piled up, one on top of the other, each tamping down the last. Her chest heavy with the weight of them.
“Maybe it was for the best,” Lady Franklin told her. “A wild animal like that isn’t meant to be domesticated.”
Well, maybe Lady Jane was right. Maybe it was for the best. Without him, perhaps she could finally leave Flinders behind, tuck away her few remaining memories and embrace her role as the girl in the portrait in the red satin dress. It would be a relief, she thought, to let it go. She’d become accustomed to stiff shoes; she ate aspic without complaint. She conversed in French and kept track of dates on a calendar. She was tired of feeling as if she lived between worlds. This was the world she lived in now.