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drop, as they often do, to the black ribbon around her wrist. His complexion, usually florid, deepens to red.
    She pulls her sleeve over it. She doesn’t want to have that argument today. Why do you insist on wearing that old piece of tat? Winterbourne Jewelers are world renowned and you wear a ribbon? You won’t even wear your wedding ring. She doesn’t want to tell him again that her wedding ring doesn’t fit, because she suspects he made it that small on purpose, hoping it would become trapped on her hand.
    He shakes his head slightly. “Have a care for your appearance, Isabella. Remember the Winterbourne name.”
    “Very well, Arthur.” She cares nothing for the Winterbourne name and only a little more than nothing for her husband. Once she was the same as other women; once she had a soft heart. But time and sorrow have worn down her goodwill, thinned it until it is barely there. She goes below deck only half-intending to find her shoes, hesitates outside the saloon. From here she can see down into the dark end of the ship, a place so full of trapped gloom and the smell of unwashed men that she can barely breathe. Seventeen man the ship, and even now after eight weeks at sea she cannot name a single one beyond the Captain and First Mate. She is both frightened and compelled by their rough maleness. Meggy, who is sitting in the saloon knitting, calls out to her.
    “Isabella?”
    Isabella turns and smiles at her friend. A ship is no place for a woman, but for two women it is bearable. “Shoes,” she says.
    Meggy grimaces, scrunching up her pretty face. “Yes, one must wear shoes. Sharp things and rough things everywhere.”
    “But it’s so much easier to climb the stairs without them.” The staircase between the main deck and ’tween deck more closely resembles a ladder. Here in the saloon there is light from the small round windows. There is even a semblance of civilized comfort in the mahogany dining table, the embroidered cushions, the hanging lampshade. The Captain’s desk is laid out tidily under a porthole. Books and maps, though Isabella would be surprised if he read and even more surprised if he could follow a map given the frightening amounts of whiskey he consumes daily. Isabella, still shoeless, sits next to Meggy and picks up her embroidery ring.
    “Still,” Meggy says, “you don’t want to stand on a nail. Much more blood than falling down stairs.” She speaks with the weary authority of one who has been on many voyages, seen many shipboard injuries. And indeed she has. Meggy Whiteaway is one of the reasons Isabella is here. Meggy travels a great deal with her husband, the Captain, and longs for female company. Life aboard a cargo ship is not a natural environment for a woman, and Meggy has been pressing Isabella for years to join them on a journey. Arthur and the Captain are old school chums. Isabella met Meggy the day she married Arthur and has always liked her, or felt sorry for her, or perhaps both.
    Another reason Isabella is here, of course, is the parliamentary mace. Commissioned by the Queen, designed by Arthur Winterbourne, made lovingly on British soil and destined for Sydney, where it will be handed to the new Australian governmentto celebrate federation. Arthur wanted to accompany it, and so Isabella came too. Better than staying in Somerset, prey to his viperous family.
    But Isabella knows the most pressing reason she is aboard the barque Aurora. She is here because it solves, temporarily, the problem of What To Do About Isabella, a question she hears whispered behind hands in the parlor at her mother-in-law’s house, as much as she sees it in the eyes of her husband. There was a time when she might have felt ashamed that she had brought them all so much worry and embarrassment. But social shame became beyond insignificant when she lost Daniel.
    “Are you well, Isabella?” Meggy is saying, her round blue eyes soft with concern. “You look quite pale.”
    Isabella fights