Free The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women by Deborah J. Swiss Page A

not dawdle because nightfall approached by half past four and they had fourteen miles yet to go.
    Over the braes and past sheep that grazed the gentle grasslands, the city girls arrived in real farm country. Unlike drab January in Glasgow, this landscape was bursting with winter wildlife. Geese, ducks, black-bird-sized woodpeckers, and bright blue-and-orange kingfishers kept the wooded lochs alive with activity. Giant whooper swans migrating from Iceland were everywhere. Their silly honking, echoing through the hollows, would have cracked a grin on the face of even the gloomiest adolescent.
    As the city disappeared, it was like walking through a looking glass and emerging into an enchanted countryside of glistening lakes, streams gurgling pristine water, and cozy thatched-roof cottages. The determined damsels tramped down the track toward Kilmarnock, lapsing into silence. The only sound was from the footfalls of their rough-worn boots. The lonely road dragged on and on. Four hours of majestic beauty had become tedious and exhausting.
    Five miles outside Kilmarnock, Agnes, Janet, and Helen happened upon another inviting halfway house, its pristine whitewashed stucco and shiny black shutters unlike anything they’d seen in Glasgow. Amid the merriment inside of gin drinkers and tobacco puffers, the girls made a beeline for the coal-burning stove. Toasting her feet before the fire, Agnes rubbed her aching toes. Janet, knowing that daylight was in short supply, soon pulled her younger charges onto their feet and back into the January cold. Lengthening shadows signaled the final leg of their trek. The sun’s quick descent had begun to dull the soft green palette cast across rolling farmland.
    In the thick of gnarled sycamores tinged pink, turrets rose from the horizon. This late in the day, nearly twenty miles on the road, Agnes, Janet, and Helen probably didn’t care much about abandoned castles, but the Rowallan estate commanded attention from the most road-weary traveler. Located in a sheltered hollow, it is “environed with trees, many of which have braved the blast for centuries, and still wave their branches as majestically as they did in days of yore, when knights and ladies gay walked beneath their shadows.” 9
    Rowallan was, in fact, the birthplace of scandalous Scottish royalty. Countess Elizabeth Mure was born on its marshy grounds in 1315. Longtime mistress to Robert II, High Steward of Scotland, she married him after giving birth to nine children. Because they had violated forbidden degrees of kinship, approval to marry required a papal dispensation. Had she not died before Robert ascended the throne, Elizabeth would have been crowned Scotland’s queen.
    The three untamed princesses carried less regal concerns. As shadows fell, questions arose. Where would they sleep this night? Would they be able to locate Agnes’s cousins? Could they prosper as thieves in a new town?
    One mile from Kilmarnock, the girls turned onto Glasgow Road and walked straight toward Dean Castle, built by Lord Boyd in 1457 and situated in a wooded glen, or “dean,” for which the palace was named. Two square towers, unequal in height, loomed over the enclosed courtyards and three-story palace. Barren orchards, weedy gardens, and overgrown rhododendron bushes blanketed the deserted estate.
    Nineteenth-century Kilmarnock historian Archibald M’Kay offers this view of the castle: “Though grey and rent with years, it looks as if conscious of its strength, and as if frowning defiance down the valley that stretches before it. From the same eminences we have a glimpse of the town, with its towers and spires, which give it an air of importance; and the eye, ranging still farther, rests delighted on the beautiful green hills of Craigie.” 10 A fairy-tale panorama welcomed three hungry, grumbling lasses. Kilmarnock’s grand entrance was nothing like Glasgow’s.
    The Best-Laid Plans
    The turn toward Kilmarnock revealed handsome villas adorned