'You'll be company for each other, won't you?' was what Mrs. Jones had said, with her nervous little smile.

What she needed, Abi realised, was an obeah woman. These things were simpler back in Barbados. On the island, if some chit of a girl moved in, and tried to boss you around, and slept on your mattress without asking your leave-taking up nearly every inch of it with her pale sharp elbows-you'd naturally turn to obeah. That girl would know to be afraid. Even after the longest day in the fields, if you had a sore grudge in you, you could find relief by walking over to the old woman's hut with a gift of some corn mush or a tot of rum and simply saying, That new girl's a thorn in my foot, won't you put some good strong obeah on her for me? That new girl's a thorn in my foot, won't you put some good strong obeah on her for me?

Of course, the problem with thinking about Barbados was that every sweet memory had ten evil ones hanging on its tail. Scratching her shoulder blade just now, for instance, Abi's fingertips met the S S in the word in the word Smith. Smith. Smith was her first owner; he had bought a job lot of them off the ship, eighty-six women and girls all polished up with palm oil to look healthy. The branding-iron was red gold, she remembered, and when it descended a smell went up like fried chitterlings. Smith was her first owner; he had bought a job lot of them off the ship, eighty-six women and girls all polished up with palm oil to look healthy. The branding-iron was red gold, she remembered, and when it descended a smell went up like fried chitterlings.

Most nights Abi said her name to herself-her true name, from Africa-over and over, to draw herself back into the arms of sleep. But now her bed was occupied by a stranger, she'd have to be sure not to whisper it, not even to think it secretly in her head, in case it slipped out.

All quiet on Inch Lane. Nothing stirred in the house.

In her narrow room, Mrs. Ash crawled onto her back. Moonlight slipped its blade between the shutters; it made her breasts ache. Times like this, in the awful accuracy of the night, she knew what she had become: a dried-up bitter thing of thirty-nine.

She always seemed to start out on the wrong footing. This London girl, for instance; Mrs. Ash had had the civilest of intentions, but somehow she'd taken an instant dislike to the creature, sitting at table all pert and bright-eyed in her stylish hoops. Mrs. Ash knew she herself lacked the gift of making herself liked. She was always on the edge of things.

Once upon a time there'd been a woman of twenty-two called Nance Ash; a new wife and mother in the tiny village of Abergavenny in the Black Mountains. She had no Welsh, so her husband spoke English to her, tenderly enough. She kept to herself, by and large, but she did no one any harm. Kind enough, Kind enough, her neighbours would probably have said, for all they knew of her. Kind enough, at any rate, to keep the baby in bed between her and her husband on a cold January night. She wouldn't have left him to freeze stiff in a cradle, as too many did. She kept him lovely and warm between her breasts, didn't she? her neighbours would probably have said, for all they knew of her. Kind enough, at any rate, to keep the baby in bed between her and her husband on a cold January night. She wouldn't have left him to freeze stiff in a cradle, as too many did. She kept him lovely and warm between her breasts, didn't she?

Could've happened to anyone, as they said to her husband. as they said to her husband. The will of the Maker, and no use fretting over it. The will of the Maker, and no use fretting over it.

If only Owen Ash hadn't been stupid with drink and rolled onto his back, not feeling the soft bundle crushed under him; if only his wife Nance hadn't been sleeping so sound, or if she'd woken to check the infant in the night, if only the creature had been a bit stronger, cried a little louder- An overlaying's nobody's fault. That was what everyone said. That was what everyone said.

The thing was, though, that baby had been Nance Ash's only chance. Without her knowledge, on that one long night all the hope was pressed out of her life. The next day her tiny boy was put in a coffin no bigger than a hatbox, and her husband, blind with gin, called her terrible names and stumbled out into the lane. After three days she knew he was never coming back, no matter how long she waited.

No longer mother, no longer wife. Her parents were dead and she'd been their only child. She had no relatives left alive. She'd never possessed what you might call friends. The neighbours offered what they could, but in Abergavenny in wintertime, that wouldn't be much; certainly not enough to keep flesh on a grown woman's bones. Her only skills were those that would have fitted her to be a wife and mother. Nance Ash was reduced to beggary, with her own milk dribbling away through her stays.

Which is why she would always owe the Joneses a proper gratitude. When she'd jolted into Monmouth on her neighbour's cart, all dusty from the road, Thomas Jones had nodded approvingly at her swollen chest and hired her on the spot. She hadn't been able to speak, at first, she remembered now; she'd just nodded her head. Mr. Jones had told her quite gently that she should stop crying. 'It might sour the milk for our little Grandison.' Then he'd asked whether her husband was gone for good. She'd quite understood the question. For a wet-nurse, a widow was best; seed spoiled the milk.

It was in those days that she'd first turned to the Good Book. Before that she'd assumed life was going to be a pleasant enough business, and thought little about it. But in the first years of what everyone called her widowhood, Mrs. Ash had felt a terrible hunger to make sense of the whole story. And in the Scriptures-troubling and enigmatic as they could be, at times-she had learned to see a pattern. For all the days of this life the evil might triumph over the good, but in the end the sinners would be cast down and the clean souls would be lifted up. The Lord's was the only company in which Nance Ash could really feel at ease, because she was convinced He loved her, no matter how she snapped or no matter how many lines there were on her forehead. He was her one true friend. And she knew she had His written promise: in the end He would wipe away all the tears from her eyes.

In return, she gave thanks regularly. The Joneses had offered her a home, hadn't they, when there was nowhere else to go but the workhouse, or the bare ditches? And in return she had fed their children well. When Grandison was weaned, Mrs. Ash had clung on in the family; she'd even taken in some other babies to keep the milk flowing. She'd nursed all the Jones children, and it wasn't her fault if they'd died, all except for little Hetta. These things happened. It wasn't as if she'd blighted them. She'd given every drop she had for thirteen years, all told, right up until the day Hetta turned her face from the wrinkled nipple and screamed for bread and dripping. There were plenty of other wet-nurses in Monmouth by then, and no one asked Mrs. Ash to take in their child. Her worn-out breasts hurt for a while, but soon dried up. Strange, to have them lie flat against her ribs, after so many years of fullness.

She had to give Thomas Jones full credit. The man might be missing a leg but he had more than his share of principle. Another father might have lacked understanding of the sacred bond between nurse and child; a lesser man might have told her that her job was over once Hetta was weaned. The family could have turned her off to save the price of her wages, and few in Monmouth would have thought any the worse of them. But Mr. Jones had kept Mrs. Ash on to rear the girl so his wife could spend her days cutting and sewing in the shop. Oh, Nance Ash never lacked gratitude.

She knew how much, above all, she had to thank her Maker for. She went to church twice a week, but most of all she read His Holy Word, and puzzled over it, and tried to live it, and every night she stayed on her knees by the bed until they were bruised. But when the moonlight came in the shutters, on nights like this one, Nance Ash couldn't help thinking of how she'd had her single chance and lost it as easy as a leaf might be blown from a tree, simply because she'd slept sound one night seventeen years ago this January, dreaming of God alone knew what. She'd never slept right though a night since. She just wished, now, she could remember what she'd been dreaming of, all those years ago: what was it that had been so sweet she hadn't wanted to wake?

It was still pitch black out; Mary decided it couldn't be later than half past five. The second day of her new life.

'Mary!'

There it was again, from somewhere downstairs. Mrs. Jones: her voice had that strange lilt to it-like Susan Digot's, it occurred to Mary now. But this wasn't Mary's mother or Mary's house. This was a mistress waking a hired maid.

All at once Mary knew she'd wandered out of her own story into another, and was lost. She pressed her face into the pillow and stopped breathing. Service. Service. The word sounded so harmless, so everyday. Folk went into service all the time. The word sounded so harmless, so everyday. Folk went into service all the time. I've found a very proper place, I've found a very proper place, they said; they said; I mustn't lose my place. I mustn't lose my place. But whatever place this was, it wasn't Mary's. But whatever place this was, it wasn't Mary's.

She conjured up Caesar's impassive plum-coloured mouth to scare herself. She couldn't show her face back in London yet, she knew. Monmouth's a hidey-hole, that's all, Monmouth's a hidey-hole, that's all, said Doll in her head. said Doll in her head. Like that stinking ditch we crouched in when the bread riot ran amok, remember? Anything can be borne for a while. Like that stinking ditch we crouched in when the bread riot ran amok, remember? Anything can be borne for a while.

'Mary Saunders!'

Nan Pullen once said a strange thing about her mistress, the same woman who would one day hand Nan over to the magistrate. Masters and mistresses were only cullies by another name, according to Nan. You pretended to be satisfied, or grateful, even. You served them, but they never knew you. You robbed them of whatever you could, because whatever they paid, it was never enough for what they asked.

Mary hauled herself off the pillow and sat up. Abi was lying beside her like a figure on a tomb, arms folded. Mary almost jumped. She had thought the maid-of-all-work would have been up hours ago, starting the fires and boiling water. 'Good morning,' she said warily.

Abi said nothing, only stared up at the ceiling.

'Aren't you needed, below?'

'I sick.'

Mary gave her a closer look. No flush or sweating, not a shiver. 'What ails you, in particular?' she asked pointedly.

'I sick,' repeated Abi, and turned her face to the window.

As Mary hurried down the stairs past the Joneses' bedchamber, the mistress called her in. 'Do you need any help dressing, madam?' asked Mary.

'Oh no,' said Mrs. Jones, flustered, tugging the cage of her hoop up around her narrow waist, 'I only wished to ask if you slept well.'

'Well enough, madam. So Abi's been taken sick, it seems,' said Mary neutrally.

'Ah, yes, so she told me when I looked in, first thing this morning.' Mrs. Jones worried at a knot in her hoop strings. 'She's not as strong as she looks, you see.'

Meaning-Mary took her to understand-that Abi was a shamming malingerer, but the mistress didn't want a fight today.

'Perhaps you could help me serve breakfast?'

'Of course,' she told Mrs. Jones, taking the tapes of the slim hoop and pulling them into a neat bow in the small of her mistress's back.

'Why, thank you, Mary.'

The master took no more notice of Mary than if she'd been a cat. It was a strange sensation; most men had been in the habit of taking their breeches down at the sight of her, but Mr. Jones carried right on dressing. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him get his wrinkled linen drawers on under his flowing shirt. She had a childish longing to see his stump, but it was hidden in the folds of linen. She supposed he must have a yard and balls like any man; there was Hetta to prove it. Now he unrolled a woollen stocking precisely along his pale calf and fastened it with a garter over the knee. Mr. Jones's leg was hairy and massive; did it have the strength of two, Mary wondered?

She held the wide black skirt over Mrs. Jones's head-quality grosgrain silk, though dull, she noted-and helped her mistress wriggle into it. Then she picked up the matching sleeves and started buttoning them onto the bodice.

'Oh, Mary, you're very deft.'

'Thank you, madam.'

Her eyes slid back to the master. For a moment, when he stood up in his single leather shoe, the empty leg of his breeches swung. Then he snatched it up behind with one hand, and fastened it to his waistband with the little button his wife sewed on all his clothes. After that he dressed like any other man. The old-fashioned skirts of his frock-coat, stiffened with buckram, flared around his knee.

Mr. Jones's fuzzy head looked odd once the rest of him was dressed. He raised a cloud of blue powder when he clapped on his dishevelled wig.

'Should you like to have Daffy up to dress your peruke, my dear?' asked his wife.

He shook his head, sitting down at the mirror and taking up a comb.

Mary suspected the master would always see to his own wig, even if he had ten thousand pounds a year. She'd never yet heard him say the words I need. I need.

After a week Mr. Jones decided that the new girl was settling in well. She had a slightly bold manner, at times, but that was only to be expected in a girl who'd grown up in the streets of the great city; impudence was endemic there, he'd heard.

As a rule Mary Saunders was to be found cleaning the house or helping his wife in the shop, but every now and then his wife sent her through to the stays room with a message or a query. The girl was acutely aware of his missing leg, he noted with amusement; sometimes she'd offer to fetch things so he wouldn't have to get up, dreading perhaps that he might trip on the edge of a floorboard! At such times Mr. Jones swatted her away, hopping across the room with his arms piled high with unfinished stays, his head almost touching the ceiling. 'Find someone who has need of you, girl,' he liked to say.

Once Mary Saunders came in when he was cross-legged at his work, the translucent plates of whalebone laid out in front of him on the little low table which was scored as if by a wild animal. He cut strips of bone with his knife, then whittled them down. Laid out in rays around him on the rush mat, they reminded him of the articulated skeleton of some star-shaped fish.

'How many bits of bone do you need?' Mary asked. 'Sir,' she added, a half-second too late.

He glanced up at her. 'Forty pieces,' he answered pleasantly. 'Forty at the least.'

She watched over his shoulder for a few minutes. He could feel her gaze on his hands. 'I thought they'd all be the same shape,' she remarked at last.

Mr. Jones looked up from his blade and laughed. 'Girl! Is the human form a rectangle?'

Mary blinked at him. Did she understand the word, he wondered? It was only female schooling she'd had, after all.

'Am I a mere box-maker?' he asked, more simply.

She smiled uncertainly.

He gave a little sigh, but the truth was, he loved to explain his trade. He took up the new stays for Mrs. Broderick that hadn't been covered yet. 'You need strong verticals to press the stomachs in, and diagonals across the ribs,' he told the girl, stroking the double lines of backstitch that went up either side of each ridge. 'Then these thin horizontals are required at the back to flatten those unsightly shoulder blades. Not forgetting the wide shaping bones across the front, to plump up the breasts.'

She looked away, at the word; suddenly he remembered that the girl was only fifteen.

'Such are the whims of fashion,' he rushed on, 'that the neckline sinks a little lower every year. Some staymakers use steel across the top,' he added, 'but in my view whalebone is just as efficacious, and more genteel.'

Mary still wasn't meeting his eye; perhaps she was one of those modern young girls who were martyrs to their modesty? 'How many seams are there?' she asked softly.

'Oh, some lax fellows get by with five or six,' said Mr. Jones, 'but I'd be ashamed to go under ten.' His hand caressed the shoulder-straps of the stays he was holding. 'I bone the straps too. It's these little touches that make a set stand out from the crowd. The great staymaker Cosins, of London-'

But she'd interrupted him. 'How can they stand out when nobody sees them?'

He gave her a tiny smile. 'Those with an eye can see the shape through no matter how many layers of bodices and jackets.'

'As if the cloth were glass?' asked the girl, fascinated.

'Exactly. The French call us tailleurs de corps, tailleurs de corps, tailors of the body,' he added crisply. 'We are artists who work in bone. Though whalebone is in truth a sort of giant fish-tooth.' He dropped a splinter of it into the girl's hand. 'Some cheap staymakers rely on goose quill and others on cane, but in my view there's no substitute for the true Greenland tailors of the body,' he added crisply. 'We are artists who work in bone. Though whalebone is in truth a sort of giant fish-tooth.' He dropped a splinter of it into the girl's hand. 'Some cheap staymakers rely on goose quill and others on cane, but in my view there's no substitute for the true Greenland baleen.' baleen.'

She looked at him blankly.

'Have you never seen a whale, Mary?'

'No sir. There were none in London.'

'Nor in Monmouth,' he said with a chuckle. 'I meant a whale in a picture. Here-' With the help of his hands he lurched to a standing position. The girl stepped backwards, clearly afraid they would collide. With two hops he had reached his little bookcase and unlocked it. In an old gilt-spined periodical he found what he was looking for: an engraving of a fat monster ploughing through the waves. He tapped the lines that represented the coast. 'Greenland,' he said. 'Three months from here.'

The girl peered at the picture. Only when his callused finger pointed out the boat with the tiny men in it did she seem to realise what size the whale was. He could hear her suck in her breath.

'They say his teeth are fifteen feet long, Mary.'

'Is that true?'

'I don't know.' He stared at the picture. 'I do hope so.'

She offered to go, then; she hadn't meant to disturb the master, she said. But he assured her he could do with some assistance, since Daffy was out delivering stockings. So he had her hold a long strip of whalebone bent like a bow while he backstitched it into its narrow sheath of linen. Her hands were surprisingly steady.

It was in the afternoons that Mary felt most restless. Sometimes the mistress seemed to notice this, and sent her out on errands on the pretext that 'Abi seems tired today, don't you think?' The black maid appeared to be working to rule these days, going about the bare minimum of tasks with a mulish manner that Mary interpreted as: Let the Londoner do it. Let the Londoner do it.

But Mary was glad enough to get out of the house. Today the long list she had to memorise ended with 'a half pound of coffee from the chandler's, look you now, and ask them all if they'd be so kind as to put it on the slate till Friday.' Look you now. Look you now. That's what Mary's mother used to say. But unlike Jane Jones, Susan Digot had usually been pointing out some disaster: a spill, a breakage, another ruined day. That's what Mary's mother used to say. But unlike Jane Jones, Susan Digot had usually been pointing out some disaster: a spill, a breakage, another ruined day.

Dirty snow was piled up against the houses. In the weeks since Mary's arrival, Inch Lane had narrowed to the width of her skirt. Was this winter going to last forever?

There were no pavements here, as there were in much of London; you had to pick your way along the street through all the rubbish and dung that stuck up out of the snow. Coming out of Inch Lane, Mary found herself smack in the middle of Monmouth, halfway between the genteel houses of Whitecross Street and the stink of the small docks. The cramped quality of the place still amazed her: nobs and mob not two minutes' walk apart. Everywhere she turned, the walls were lime-washed; the small doors glared.

Since the first day she'd stepped outside the house, she'd kept one dreading eye out for that Welshman from the inn at Coleford, the man she'd bilked of a whole pound for what she'd claimed was her lost virginity. But she'd never caught a glimpse of him in Monmouth. He had to be a farmer from beyond the mountains, she decided.

By now Mary had learned the names of the dozen streets, and that was all there seemed to be to this little knot of a town, snowbound between two rivers. Over there in the curve where the tiny Monnow met the fat Wye lay Chippenham Meadows; folk walked there on summer evenings, according to Daffy. But summer seemed to Mary like another country. Time stood still in this part of the world; in the house on Inch Lane, the Christmas evergreens were still nailed to the walls.

The wind made her eyes run; she pulled her scarf across her face and tugged the open ends of her mittens over her fingertips. Her thin boots skidded on the packed snow. She couldn't remember why she'd longed to get outside today. She had two shawls knotted round her shoulders, over her cloak, and she was still freezing. The air was so peculiarly clean, it smelled of nothing at all.

She bought a twist of salt in paper from the grocer's; a stoppered jar of green ointment from Lomax the apothecary for Mrs. Ash's mysteriously ailing legs; a slice of fresh butter from the stall by the bridge. An hour later Mary trudged back along the Wye with a heavy basket. The half a crown in her pocket was Mrs. Jones's change. No chance of losing it; ever since the night her mother had beaten her for the lost penny, Mary had never put her hand into her pocket without checking her seams for holes.

Be sure and always carry half a crown to prove you're not a whore.

How does that prove it, Doll?

It pays off the Reformer constable, lack-wit! said Doll Higgins, who'd always kept a half a crown in her shoe, and never drank it, not even when she'd pawned the cloak off her back. Doll, who'd had a mortal dread of losing her liberty, and thought a half a crown would stand between her and all harm. said Doll Higgins, who'd always kept a half a crown in her shoe, and never drank it, not even when she'd pawned the cloak off her back. Doll, who'd had a mortal dread of losing her liberty, and thought a half a crown would stand between her and all harm.

A woman stumped by through the snow with three children at her skirts. 'Idle hands!' she barked at Mary.

The girl jumped. At first she didn't understand the words, the woman's accent was so thick. She stared into the dull brown eyes of the woman who carded wool as she walked, scraping the muddy shreds into place. Behind her the hurrying children worked away on smaller combs.

'I've a basket to carry,' Mary protested, her voice coming out too shrill.

The stranger never broke her stride. She called back over her shoulder, 'Carry it on your elbow next time, why don't you, and put those fine fingers to use.' Her children scurried after, still clacking their combs like untrained musicians.

Alone on the road, Mary stared down at the fingertips emerging from her mittens, purpled by cold where they gripped the basket. She could hardly feel them. But she saw now, with a malicious pleasure, how smooth they were compared to a real Marcherwoman's. In her old life, the only job of work these hands had ever done was hold her skirts up out of the mud, or rub the occasional old fellow's tool to life. She snorted aloud at the thought. What would the locals call her if they knew that?

At the chandler's, the women were gossiping as loudly as geese, but they fell silent as soon as Mary came in. She still wasn't sure whether it was Welsh they spoke among themselves, or English with a thick Welsh accent. But the chandler was a friendly fellow. 'Su Rhys's daughter, in't it?' he asked, wrapping up Mary's parcel of ground coffee.