Wollombi, NSW, Australia, 1847
‘It’s blood—bad blood—that’s causing it. A new pinafore and some education ain’t going to change nothing. Still the same soul tucked beneath. You can teach a wild dog to come when it’s called, but you wouldn’t turn your back, not once it’s bloodied.’
Mellie sat hot and cross-legged on the dirt of the scullery floor wedged between the washboard and the mangle, hands over her ears, trying to block out Cook’s words. Quite why she kept finding herself on the edge of the millpond at sunrise, with nothing for company but a blanket of mist and the cries of the curlews, she didn’t understand.
Twisting this way and that, she plucked at her soggy night-gown, searching for the bad blood Cook kept ranting about. No sign of any stains on her skin or her nightgown, bad or otherwise.
‘Why does she keep going down there? That’s what I’d like to know.’ Fanny pushed up her sleeves and threw another bundle of kindling under the main copper.
‘Only thing a scullery maid needs worry about is how to clean. Get to it.’
‘She ought to have learnt her lesson by now.’
‘She’s drawn to the place.’ Cook’s beady eyes skewered Mellie. ‘If you keep going down there you’ll be taken. Small, plain and bony or large, round and plump, he don’t care so long as he gets tender young flesh.’
Mellie crawled closer to the copper and rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. The more she tried to remember how she ended up at the millpond, the more the nothingness grew, as though someone had singed a great hole in her memory. She’d tried to explain that she didn’t do it on purpose, didn’t know how she’d got there. But Cook never believed a word, called it a flight of fancy, whatever that might be…
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