9

Piles of horse manure steamed under the street’s gaslights as the party set off before dawn for the train station and the journey to Cologne. Hilda sat on the carriage’s bench seat between Bonny and Dorondera, and opposite Monsieur Perouse and Jurano, who lay down as soon as he was inside.

‘I will take the box seat to give you more space,’ Louis said, appearing concerned as he closed the door.

From the corner of her eye, Hilda studied the Frenchman, who was in turn watching Dorondera. Hilda lay her shawl across her lap for warmth and fanned it out over her friends as best she could.

‘The English Queen’s daughter is married to the German emperor’s son,’ she said in German, hoping Bonny would be encouraged by the connection. He appeared suddenly interested, and Hilda continued, ‘I am sure the Queen will hear of your performances in Cologne. And with so many shows in the next short while, we will soon be able to afford the passage to England.’

‘Did your father say it is soon?’ Bonny asked in the same language. ‘You believe him?’

Hilda was enjoying Bonny being so close to her and did not want to disappoint him again.

‘Yes,’ she lied.

She let her hand fall beside her on the carriage seat, near where Bonny’s hand rested under her shawl. Discreetly, she removed her glove and let her hand slide closer to his, until their smallest fingers were faintly touching. She could feel his warmth but kept her gaze steady, taking in the last sights of Dresden. To her astonishment, Bonny covered her hand with his. She dared not move and instead waited, savouring the subtle sensations of their skin touching, aware of every electrifying shift. Her heart swelled. Perhaps it was an accident, the placement of his hand. Perhaps it meant nothing. Nervously, she lifted her thumb and slid it down the side of Bonny’s smallest finger, in a way that might simply be the result of a change in position. Was it possible, after all, that Bonny felt the same way? In answer, Bonny pressed his thumb against the side of Hilda’s hand and held it there with intention. Yes. The answer was yes, and Hilda felt a warm ache deep in her belly that she did not remember feeling before. They remained like that, hands held under the cover of the shawl, as they said farewell to the Elbe and let go of each other only to alight at the railway station.

Standing at the platform, Hilda whispered to Bonny in Badtjala, ‘When we have finished here, when we have seen the Queen, I will go back to K’gari with you if you like.’

‘Yo,’ Bonny answered, his breath a fog in the morning air. Yes.

On the train, Louis purchased a newspaper, and Hilda watched his face drop as he read of a great fire in Sydney’s Garden Palace, a vast exhibition space that housed many wonders of the world. He showed Hilda the photograph of the massive blaze and the rivers of molten iron flowing from it, the bronze statue of Queen Victoria engulfed by flames.

‘I sent a crate of artefacts from central Queensland to be displayed there,’ Louis said. It was something of which Hilda had only vague memories. ‘And not just me. Museums loaned entire collections. To think it is all gone …’

Hilda rested her hand on her father’s arm.

Two days later in Cologne, Jurano could not get out of his hotel bed for breakfast and muttered Badtjala words that Hilda did not understand. She lay her hand across his forehead and found it hot with fever.

‘Beeral is calling for him,’ Dorondera said, rubbing her uncle’s arm. Her own cough had thankfully not worsened. ‘I don’t have the medicines here to make him better.’

Hilda turned to Bonny, then her father.

‘Papa, call for a doctor.’

‘Doctors are no good,’ Bonny said as he stared at a speck of Jurano’s blood on the wooden floorboards.

‘Why do you say that, Bonny?’ Hilda probed, but he remained silent.

Hilda took a clean handkerchief from her pocket and wet it with water from the jug beside the bed. She held the damp cloth against Jurano’s face and tried to soothe him as she remembered her mother doing when people grew sick on K’gari from the settlers’ illnesses. Dorondera sat on the other side of her uncle’s bed and met Hilda’s eyes.

‘Do you hate us very much for bringing you here?’ Hilda asked her, but before Dorondera could answer, the doctor Louis had sent for entered the room and rested on his walking cane to take in the scene.

Jurano’s eyes flickered as the doctor approached him and applied the stethoscope to his chest. He coughed hard and, it seemed, painfully and again there was blood.

The doctor shook his head. ‘How long has he been unwell?’

‘I hadn’t seen blood before these last few days,’ Louis said.

‘A long time,’ Bonny said in German.

‘You knew?’ Louis’s face reddened. ‘You should have told me! If there has been blood –’

‘From the firewater. I told him to stop.’

‘It is tuberculosis!’ Hilda’s father said, shaking his head. He appeared forlorn and, instinctively, Hilda reached out to him.

Bonny stood mute.

The doctor said, ‘He should be in hospital, but even then …’

Jurano was tormented with another round of rattly coughing, and Hilda assisted the old doctor to slightly lift Jurano’s head and shoulders. The coughing worsened and Jurano struggled for breath.

‘Help us, Papa. He is choking!’

Louis seemed lost, as if paralysed by the realisation the sickness was indeed tuberculosis. Hilda looked then at the doctor, but he, too, appeared helpless to do more than he already was, which was very little.

She had heard of Aboriginal medicine men sucking the evil from a patient’s mouth and nose and spitting it into a stream. Was there not some modern device …?

She leaned over Jurano, bending his head and neck further forwards and patting him on the back as her mother used to do.

‘Not so close, Hilda!’ her father said again, pulling her back. ‘I can’t have you falling ill.’ Finally, he assisted the doctor to instead prop Jurano against a pillow.

The door opened, and Monsieur Perouse entered the room. Without hesitation Dorondera went to him, and the Frenchman placed his arm around her shoulder.

On a cold Monday morning, three weeks after Jurano had been admitted to hospital, a hint of winter already in the air, Hilda was shocked to find Professor Virchow by Jurano’s sick bed. Dorondera recoiled from the man.

‘Thank you for calling me,’ Virchow told Hilda’s father. The professor was grim-faced. ‘Tuberculosis is indeed the scourge of our times. I will take him back with me to the Charité. It is, as I am sure you know, the best hospital in the country. If he is to survive, he will need to go there.’

When Dorondera realised what the professor was proposing, she shook her head vehemently and said she did not want her uncle taken away.

‘People do not come back when they are taken,’ Dorondera said in Badtjala. She looked to the door as if willing Monsieur Perouse to arrive. When he did not, she began to loudly sing, asking Beeral to intervene and make her uncle well again.

All in the room stopped to listen, as did several people who had been passing in the corridor. When Dorondera finished, Louis spoke softly to her.

‘I apologise, but we have no choice.’

‘So we must go there, too. To Berlin,’ Hilda said, resecuring her bonnet and making for the stairs. Since arriving in Cologne, Dorondera and Bonny had performed daily to reasonable crowds, rehearsing for the emperor’s visit at Louis’s insistence. ‘Come on, Dorondera. We must pack.’

Louis seemed surprised, even shocked.

‘Hilda, stop! The emperor and his family are visiting tomorrow,’ he said. ‘They are expecting a performance.’

Hilda spun around. ‘Papa, no. Not now.’