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long-dry underground rivers that threaded beneath the basin, the ground had been excavated into a barren and currentlyfrost-rimed landscape of gullies and deep trenches topped with great heaps of soil and gravel, as though a giant mole had gone berserk, spanned by spindly-looking timber viaducts and criss-crossed with rail lines. And again, the odd sail-like structures Kitty had noticed the night before were everywhere, taut in the raw, cutting wind. The vista was one of hectic, mud-sodden industry.
    The people they passed on the street—and they numbered in the hundreds—wore heavy layers of clothing against the cold and damp. Men, many sporting bushy beards, wore rough work attire and sou’westers or the unglamorous but evidently ubiquitous cabbage-tree hats. The few women looked little different from working women everywhere, in their shawls, bonnets and flapping capes. All, however, appeared to be wearing very sturdy boots or clogs, and their hems were noticeably shorter than those in Melbourne. Among the civilians were several mounted and foot police, distinctive in their dark-blue uniforms with red trim.
    ‘Where exactly is this house?’ Kitty asked, her ears humming with the cold.
    Rian transferred the reins to one hand and dug a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘According to this, it’s near the Red Hill Lead and it’s the fourteenth dwelling directly behind the saddlery on the left.’ He glanced along the road and pointed. ‘Just up there, I’d say.’
    He steered the cart into an alleyway and down a short slope, then along a rough track past a dozen or so shanties. ‘This must be it,’ he said, reining in.
    Kitty’s heart sank.
    The ‘dwelling’ was a timber-and-iron cottage, with a window in each wall, a chimney and a single door. The windows were glazed, with the exception of two boarded-over panes, the silver-grey of the slab door testimony to its never having been painted. Above it had been nailed a shingle that read Lilac Cottage —the work of the Widow Murphy, Kitty assumed—even though there wasn’t a lilacin sight. The cottage was tiny, but she had to admit it was markedly more substantial than many of the bark huts and tents flanking it, their sides sagging with frigid rainwater. And, thank God, it wasn’t near any butchers’ tents, more than a dozen of which they had passed. With carcasses hanging in the open air and great piles of discarded offal and skins lying about, they would be a putrefying, reeking Mecca for flies in summer.
    ‘You could ask next door,’ she suggested, her fingers mentally crossed that they had made a mistake.
    Rian climbed down from the cart and rapped on the sheet of iron that served as the nearest hut’s door. A harried-looking woman appeared, wiping her hands on her apron; there was a quick conversation, then Rian turned to Kitty and nodded.
    She smiled resignedly, climbed off the cart and brushed the creases out of her skirts. ‘Is there a key?’ she asked as he came back.
    He opened his hand. ‘Your woman there was looking after it,’ he said, and unlocked the door.
    Kitty stepped inside, followed closely by an inquisitive Amber.
    It wasn’t quite as bad as she’d been dreading. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, and had three rooms. Two were bedrooms, one only just large enough to accommodate a narrow single bed, and the main room had a fireplace fitted with a sway to hold non-existent pots and cooking utensils. But no matter, because Pierre, as usual, would be preparing all the meals.
    There was, however, a small table with two chairs, and a rocking chair, which wouldn’t rock properly because the bare floorboards were uneven, and the larger of the two bedrooms held an iron double bed frame, but no mattress. A glance through the window of the back bedroom revealed that the sanitary facilities consisted of a small copper on a tripod over a brick fire-pit, and a rickety-looking privy.
    The cottage was also damp, and Kitty knew