The Exiles

After leaving solitary, Hazel must work in the crime yard with the rest of the convicts doing hard labor. She consoles herself with lines from The Tempest, much like Evangeline used to find comfort in literature, as well. She tries not to think of Ruby all alone at the orphanage, but remains on her best behavior so she is not punished for anything else.

A month into her labor, Olive shows up in the crime yard claiming to need to see her. She reveals, “Buck’s the reason [Hazel] lost Ruby” (300). Buck, who escaped from his life sentence in prison, is now building the new cells at the Cascades and bragging about his vengeance on the women who scorned him. He is also trying to get Ruby from the orphanage to complete his revenge plot. The next morning, Hazel slips Olive a note and tells her to take care of something.

Six weeks later, when Hazel is released from the crime yard, she becomes eligible to return to work outside the prison as an assignable. She sees Doctor Dunne waiting with the other employers to interview the women. As numerous men ask her questions, she lies about her skills so they will pass over her. When Dunne arrives, he pretends he does not know her and instead says, “I have a child in my care and need someone to look after her” (303), implying that it was he who received her note from Olive and that he has rescued Ruby from the orphanage. He requests her presence in his practice, and, although the superintendent tries to dissuade him due to Hazel’s punishment as a liar, Dunne insists. They leave by carriage that same day. When in the carriage, Dunne hands her a small package—in it is Evangeline’s tin ticket, which she sent via Olive so many weeks before.

They arrive at the private practice he funded after three more voyages on the Medea. As she steps into the house, Hazel finds Ruby on the floor playing with wooden blocks. It has been four months since Hazel saw Ruby, and she is worried that Ruby will not recognize her. Hazel is shocked to find Maeve working for Dunne, but before she can respond to the older woman’s heartfelt welcome, Ruby calls her “mama.”

Dunne reveals the plan all along—the letter Hazel slipped to Olive included Evangeline’s tin ticket and a letter explaining Buck’s plan. It also mentioned that Maeve, a competent midwife, had recently been released from prison and would be a good nurse for Ruby. Dunne tells Hazel that he lied about being Ruby’s father at the orphanage so the warden would release her—which was lifesaving for Ruby because she was sick with typhoid. He and Maeve worked diligently around the clock to nurse Ruby back to health.

Every morning, Dunne picks up Hazel at the Cascades and takes her to his home, where she plays with Ruby all day long. They plant flowers when the weather gets warmer, and Hazel and Maeve both help Dunne with his patients. He often asks for their guidance, and although “Hazel could see him fighting to overcome his skepticism” (312) about their ways of healing, they both assist him regularly with most of his cases.

A few months later, Hazel becomes eligible for release. Dunne vouches for her in a letter to the superintendent and offers to employ her full-time. The matron returns Hazel’s meager belongings she had when she arrived at the Cascades, including the copy of The Tempest Dunne gave her when she left the Medea. On her way out, she says goodbye to Olive, who will soon be up for release as well. Olive’s old beau from the Medea has opened a bar and promised her employment upon her release, so she is in good spirits.

That night, Dunne and Hazel stand in front of Ruby’s room, and Hazel realizes she has feelings for him. She returns to her room and takes Evangeline’s tin ticket, wraps it up in Cecil’s white handkerchief, and hides them both in her dresser to give Ruby at a later date.

Hazel struggles with her newfound freedom at first but relishes her ability to be a daily part of Ruby’s life once again. One day, as she and Ruby visit the local market, she hears a small commotion in the crowd. It is Mathinna, filthy and drunk yet defiant, challenging the people who stare at her. Mathinna spots her and smiles while patting her shell necklaces that are still around her neck: “I still have them” (317), she says to Hazel. Knowing that the crowd is staring at all of them, Hazel invites Mathinna to come with them to a park across the street to talk.

Mathinna reveals her torture at the hands of the people at the orphanage but does not seem to feel sorry for herself. After a period of time, they returned her to Flinders, but “most of the people [she] knew were dead” (319), and she was too different to stay. For a year, she bounced around from the orphanage to an old convict station until she finally ran away to work for a woman who runs a bar. Now, she tends bar and drinks rum all day. When Ruby notices her necklaces, Mathinna insists on giving her one because they are “meant to be shared” (320). She reminds Hazel that Hazel was the only person who ever cared for her while she was at the Franklins. As she gives Ruby a necklace, Mathinna tells her the story of how Ruby is the thread, and all “the people you love are the shells” (321).

Overcome with emotion for the girl, Hazel desperately tries to get Mathinna to come live with them, but Mathinna laughs and refuses, saying she is a wanderer and will be alright. She reminds Hazel that Hazel is “in [her], like a ring inside a tree” (322). As she drunkenly stumbles down the street, Hazel thinks about how time will remove her convict stain, but Mathinna cannot escape the color of her skin.

In February, Doctor Dunne leaves for a physician’s conference in Melbourne for 11 days. Hazel sees him off and returns home, but when she arrives and sees Maeve working in the front garden alone, she feels like something is wrong—Ruby is not with her. Unconcerned, Maeve says that a friend of the doctor’s is playing with Ruby inside—he said he knew Ruby when she was born. Hazel instantly knows it is Buck. When they run inside, Hazel sees Ruby and Buck out in the backyard. Ruby is showing him her fairy houses, and he carries a long, sharp knife in his hand.

Hazel walks outside and says hello, trying to remain calm. Buck sneers at her and makes fun of her appearance. He reminds her of how difficult life has been for him since she ruined his life by accusing him of Evangeline’s death. While he speaks, he cuts off a lock of Ruby’s hair to show Hazel that he can harm the girl if he chooses. Hazel remains cool and offers him food and tea to get him into the house. Because Buck is starving, he takes her up on the offer, but he keeps his knife at the back of Ruby’s head the entire time.

As Hazel goes to make the mint tea, she takes the mint leaves from Maeve but pretends they are sage instead of mint. She blames the old woman’s eyesight on the error, and Maeve goes along with the ruse. She asks Buck if she can go get some mint from the garden, and, when he initially refuses, she reminds him that he has Ruby and therefore, there is nothing she can do. As she gathers mint, she also grabs a few Angel’s trumpets from the plant beside the door.

The starving Buck drinks three cups of the tea Hazel makes and scarfs down the cake and butter. He suggests that they “finish what [they] started on the ship” (332), implying that he plans to rape her. Hazel calmly tells him that it’s too late for that. As Buck begins to show signs of madness from the Angel’s trumpet, Hazel walks him through his eventual demise from the overdose of the deadly flower. Maeve and Ruby leave the room as Buck falls to the floor. He tries to grab her leg, but she unwraps his hand and says “ye are no longer strong enough to overpower me” (336).

Hazel leads a delirious Buck to the shed in the backyard where he dies before morning. The police are happy to know that the escaped murderer overdosed on an intoxicant. They bury him in an unmarked grave in the prisoner’s cemetery.

Though Hazel is glad Buck is dead, she fears what Doctor Dunne will say when he returns home. Ruby breaks the news upon his arrival, however, when she refers to a man who got very sick at the house and did not get better. Hazel takes him for a picnic and tells him the story. He is surprised by her resolve in a difficult situation but agrees with her decision. They kiss after he reveals that the entire world is pushing England to end convict transports to Australia altogether.

While watching Dunne and Ruby construct a fairy house that evening, Hazel contemplates how far she has come in life: from Glasgow, to a slave ship, to prison, and now to freedom and happiness with a child who needs her and a man who loves her. She considers all who have helped her reach this point—Evangeline, Olive, Maeve, Dunne, and Ruby, who gives her a reason to live. She begins to think that she belongs here in this “terrible, beautiful place” with “the rest of her life in front of her like a ribbon unfurling” (342).

Twenty-five years later, a grown-up Ruby locates the address of a Cecil Frederic Whitstone in London. She is in England pursuing an apprenticeship with Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, “the first female in Britain to qualify as a doctor and a surgeon” (345). To achieve this apprenticeship, Ruby shares that she grew up with a surgeon father and a midwife mother in Australia, learning from them and growing in their joint practice. Australian women are not allowed to enroll in medical school, so Ruby wants to return to London to study a formal medical education. Dr. Garrett acknowledges that convict transport to Australia ended 15 years prior but wants to know if Ruby is related to a convict. Without hesitation, Ruby reveals that her mother was a convict, and Dr. Garrett sighs at the inequality of it all.

During her three months in London, Ruby sees all of the typical tourist attractions and marvels at the beauty of England. However, before she returns to Australia, there is one thing she must do. Though it takes all of her courage, she must face her biological father. She arrives at the Whitstone estate, and an older man answers her knock. Though he looks past his prime, Ruby cannot help but “notice his resemblance to her” (350). When he asks who she is, Ruby struggles to say that he knew the woman who gave birth to her—Evangeline Stokes. Cecil is visibly taken aback by the name but invites her inside.

When he asks about Evangeline, Ruby reveals that she’s been dead for 28 years. She tells him of her life growing up in Australia with Hazel and Dunne. Agnes, the housemaid, brings them their afternoon tea. Cecil reveals that it is only the two of them and the cook, Mrs. Grimsby, that remain on the estate. He has never married and has no children. Finally, Ruby brings up his treatment of Evangeline. Though he admits to knowing she was accused of theft and the attempted murder of Agnes, he admits that he never tracked her down to hear her side of the story. Ruby’s anger with him grows, and she confronts his lack of character and resolve. She takes out the two items she has from her biological mother—Evangeline’s tin ticket and his handkerchief—and drops them into his hands. Cecil is shaken by the sight of them, and Ruby takes that moment to reveal that she is his child—a fact that Cecil already knows. Before she leaves, Ruby asks to see the room Evangeline lived in when she worked for the Whitstones. She feels a connection to her biological mother there, and Ruby contemplates all the women like Evangeline who have been neglected over the years. Cecil returns to find her and hands her a small blue box—inside is the ruby ring he gave to Evangeline all those years ago. He wants Ruby to take it, to “rescue it from ignominy” (358), but Ruby refuses it. It is not her burden to bear—it is his.

As she leaves the Whitstone residence, her memories flash forward to the man she will meet and marry and the two daughters they will have—Elizabeth and Evangeline—who will “attend the first medical school in Australia” and “establish the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women in Melbourne” (360). She relishes her experiences growing up in a colony for outsiders where she has written the rules to her own life—a feat that would have been unimaginable under the confines of social hierarchy in England. She takes one final glance back at Cecil and feels sorry for him, but not for herself—she has been shaped by so many wonderful mothers who became “the rings of [her] tree, the shells on her thread” (361). He shuts the door, and Ruby confidently goes on her way.