rampaging Xhosa, and found peaceful vistas inland where they grew their rye and gathered their wool. Boys, she thought, are fond of narrow escapes and bloodthirst. These are the sorts of things they will remember as men, when they find themselves soldiers or surgeons: once as a child, they made believe they were brave.
She regarded Hardy’s face for the first time since the mote of light slipped from his eyes.
They passed through the port market, a slipshod constellation of many-hued fruits, dyed cloths, hung meats, animals braying at the blades of the butchers, macaws on horsehair leads, natives porting crates to and from ships on callused feet, swearing under their breath in Capie and broken English.
The Maclears’ home stood next to the Cape lighthouse, atop a red rock jetty. Its view of the whalers and tall mast ships was the envy of the expatriates. A line of carriages filled the road at the base of the house. Porters brought the parcels of voyage from the front door. Sir John’s departure on his star map travels was imminent.
The Maclears’ servants fell silent at the sight of her binding her horse to the low boughs of a fig tree. She was late in her forties, but still possessed a severe, weathered beauty. She was unadorned of jewels or those impractical satchels other colonial women carried, and all the more striking for it; there was nothing else to consider but the shaded hollows of her cheeks, the quartered mango of her lips, the expanse of her slender neck. She’d pulled back her brown hair and fastened it with mother of pearl sometime in the long night, but strands had come loose to brush her skin. She was swathed in local cloth, shod in sandals, uncaring of her appearance.
She took her babies to the front door.
Sir John came shortly, still wet from bathing. A towel was loosely draped about his neck. His eyes were crinkled with age and recent sleep.
Early, she realized. In another time, I would think a visit at this hour quite inappropriate.
“My lord,” Sir John whispered when he saw Hardy.
She hefted her babies higher against her chest. Ewen protested, but she needed a free hand to extend the letter.
“I hope you remember me,” she said.
Inside the house she saw the Wynfield boy, George, portraitist at seventeen and already of some renown. He would be accompanying Sir John to fashion a painted record of their travels. The sights and ports of call, the map itself.
“You know who I am,” she called out to George. He was intent on his canvas. “Your father and my husband are allied in Ceylon.”
“I am aware, madam. Your Julia has sat many hours watching me work. A delightful creature. I’ve spoken of her to my father.”
“I should like to commission you to paint my children.”
He regarded her from across the expanse. He could not see clearly. “Of course,” he said.
Distantly, she felt herself bleed.
“I am so glad to see you before you leave South Africa,” she said to Sir John.
“We met some months ago, did we not? You’re Catherine Colebrook.”
He could not look away from her boys.
He will remember, she thought. What I ask will be tied to this moment. He will carry it with him.
“I’m grateful that you recall. It is important that you understand, I am not mad. I am a woman. We let go of nothing.”
She declined his offer of food and a doctor’s attention. “I have a daughter. A little younger than George Wynfield by the look of him. She’s alone and afraid.”
“But you are not.”
“The worst has passed.”
In time, she returned to her cart and her home in the Cape. The shanties around the port were coming to life. A steady current of vendors made their way along the water. They sold fish and shells, flowers and exotics fresh from the tethered boats newly arrived from places she once imagined she’d visit. Here and there she saw the other European expats, their easels, open pages of poetry, unfolded letters of distant news and regrets passed across months at sea. They sat in makeshift tents, hoping to sell their foreignness and continental birth for food and the means to remain far from home.
She’d extracted promises from the scientist. That he would pray for her. That he would read her letter and remember her.
Feldhausen
Cape of Good Hope, South Africa
February 22, 1836
To the kind attention of Sir John Holland:
My name is Catherine Colebrook. We were first and recently acquainted at the home of Thomas Maclear,