It all came down to the market in the end, she reminded herself. When corn was plentiful, the price of bread would fall. Whatever a woman gave away, she cheapened. Men wanted what they couldn't afford. For all Daffy's book-learning, Mary knew he'd turn out to be the same as every other man, in the end; for all his soft talk, she knew exactly what he needed from her. A hole in the wall. A hole in the wall.

Mary Saunders had never given anything away for free, and she wasn't about to start now. She let his hard fingertips move across her mouth, for a long second, while she gathered all her powers of refusal.

'Marry me,' he said simply.

She sat up so fast she scraped her elbow. The black world spun round her. 'What?'

'Didn't you hear me?' he asked, blushing red.

Sick with dizziness, Mary started laughing. It was all she could think to do.

Daffy put his hand over her mouth, as if to seal it up. 'Let me speak,' he said hurriedly. 'Give me a minute. It's a very sensible plan.'

'It's a nonsense!'

'No,' he gabbled, 'no, listen. I'm a cautious man-'

'You're a fool with swollen breeches!'

He blinked at her, startled. Very well; let him know how coarse she could be. Let him realise what an impossibility he was asking.

Daffy got up on one knee, and knotted his hands together. 'I swear,' he began, 'I swear it's not just a matter of ... amorousness. It seems to me-it has seemed to me for some time now,' he corrected himself, 'that you and I have much in common.'

Mary let her mouth twist into a smile. Was that what he called it?

'I mean,' he added hastily, 'we neither of us seem to have any immediate prospects of bettering ourselves, but when we consider the matter closely, we're both in a position to profit from our experience.'

'Daffy, man, what are you talking about?'

He cleared his throat with a donkey's bray and rushed on. 'I know you're fond of the family, as am I, but they can't expect us to stay forever. What I mean to say is, by the end of the year I'll be ready to set up my own sign as a staymaker. And you-you're almost qualified for dressmaking, and millinery, and such, aren't you? Mrs. Jones is always saying how quick a learner you are. And so before too long it might be possible for us to...'

'Marry?' she asked in the long silence.

Daffy nodded so hard she thought his head might crack off. 'I'd wish,' he said, straining for the words, 'to be the kind of husband who's as much ... friend as lover. Do you understand me? What I'm offering is a-a partnership, in all things.'

Mary's mind scurried like a rat. The man liked her, wanted her, was her match in hard work and ambition; was that such a small fortune? What had the Joneses, when they'd started out, but a mutual fondness, a few skills, and a wish to rise in the world?

'I know you're still very young,' he rushed on, 'and if you liked we could wait. But not too long, I hope. I mean, if you say yes.'

Mary let herself down into the grass. Her heart lurched in its cage of ribs.

'Please,' he added. 'I meant to say, please. I've thought it all through. I've thought of nothing else. I haven't read a book in weeks!'

That made her laugh again, in triumph. She let her eyes rest on his blue liquid ones. 'What about Gwyn?' she asked, for the pleasure of hearing the answer.

His cheeks were dark with all the blood in them. His wig was slipping off. 'I never felt like this before,' he said simply. 'I didn't think to ever feel like this.'

What would life be like with such a man? Nothing Mary had ever bothered to imagine, in her dreams of a glittering future. It would be a chance to shed her old self, once and for all. She would be an ordinary girl again, then an ordinary wife. This was the town all roads seemed to lead to. The ending to every story she'd ever read.

'Maybe,' she breathed.

'Yes?' His voice was harsh, like a soldier's in battle.

'Maybe yes.'

CHAPTER SIX.

Bloom Fall 'DON'T FORGET the rowan.' the rowan.'

'Rowan?' repeated Mary, mending the handle of her basket with a bit of old twine.

'For nailing up over the door,' said Mrs. Jones patiently. 'To keep out witches.'

Mary stared at Mrs. Jones over the kitchen table, and gave a helpless shrug. 'Whatever you say.'

It was May Eve, and Mrs. Jones had released Mary from the endless hem of Mrs. Vaughan's muslin cape and sent her off to the woods to go blossoming. 'It brings the summer in,' Mrs. Jones explained, half-laughing. 'If we don't hang blossoms up by May Morning, nothing will bear fruit.'

And indeed, thought Mary, the world was full of strange things and stranger people, so what harm could it do to nail up a few branches of blossom?

In the warm evening the river was cluttered with swans and gulls. The trees shuddered with roosting crows. There were purple bunches Mary didn't recognise till she got up close, and breathed in, and remembered the baskets in Covent Garden: lilacs. How the scent of them used to swim above the stink of the discarded fruit underfoot. She walked deeper into the wood now. An old tree, slumped under its rolls of bark, was turning green all over; through cracks in its sides the fresh twigs were breaking out, hungry for the light.

In a clearing Mary passed half a dozen locals hacking branches off a fallen birch that was the length of four men. Jarrett the Smith looked up and wiped the sweat and insects off his forehead. 'How d'you like our Maypole, Mary Saunders?'

She gave him a quick smile.

'Long enough for you, is it?' And a sly guffaw from another fellow.

Who'd said that? Maybe the red-haired man at the back, one of the ones whose names she didn't know. But they all knew her, evidently. She walked on faster. Her heart was thumping in her chest. Would they have spoken that way to any female passing through the woods today, given that it was the season of rising sap and dirty jokes?

She was safe, Mary reminded herself. She was not yet sixteen, a virgin without a history. Her only secret was that she was engaged to be married to Daffy Cadwaladyr, a respectable manservant of twenty.

Nothing was impossible.

She wasn't sure which bush was rowan, but she started to fill her basket with white tangled blossom; if she brought home a bit of everything, she'd be all right.

The creak of a breaking branch, and she spun around. But it was only Daffy, his face lit up with a smile like a Roman candle. 'Sneaking after me, were you?' she asked, trying to be stern.

'Mrs. Jones sent me to carry your basket.'

'She didn't!'

'She did!'

'She knows, then,' Mary told him, letting him press his throat against her wide red mouth. 'She's such a romantic.'

'She can't know,' he said, troubled. 'I haven't said a word yet. We agreed, not a word till after Christmas.'

'The woman's got eyes in her head, hasn't she?' murmured Mary. 'And she can smell it on the air. Every bird and plant in this wood is getting mated. It's the season.'

Not a word from Daffy; he'd loosed her long dark hair from its starched cap and dipped his face into it. His breath was a live creature at the nape of her neck. And suddenly for the first time in her life Mary felt it. A flickering in her stomach; a thrill as sharp as a blackbird's note. It occurred to her that this must be what Doll had had with her journeyman: what ordinary women felt at the hands of ordinary men.

Was it indeed due to the season, the ripening on all sides? Or was it because of the seriousness of this man's fingers? Mary's body shook behind her rigid stays. There was no time to waste. When she ripped open Daffy's breeches, a button fell into the ivy. His eyes were startled, huge. 'Wait-' he stuttered.

Mary didn't bother answering. Hair hung damp in her eyes. She didn't care if she was giving herself away by such forwardness, or if her hands had the practised ease of a harlot. What mattered was to catch hold of this tiny feeling before it disappeared for ever.

She was on top of him, then he was on top of her. There were twigs in his wig. Her heel was caught in a loop of ivy. All round them the scent of crushed blossoms went up. Daffy's lips moved as if drinking Canary wine from an invisible bottle. His legs thrashed like flames.

She slid him into her, swallowed him up. Daffy's whole body went as stiff as a corpse. It was then that Mary realised he'd never done this before in his life. He was much too new at it to realise she was no virgin. She was touched; she was appalled. His bliss was so close she could nearly taste it. She waited for it to spread into her body, fill it up.

But the fact was, the act felt the same as it always had. A necessary conjunction. A temporary occupation. She was numb. She was a million miles away. Not half so big as his father, is he? Not half so big as his father, is he? remarked Doll in her head. remarked Doll in her head.

Mary squeezed her eyes shut. Her own thoughts repelled her.

It was all over in minutes. 'Oh, Mary,' Daffy cried in her ear, 'oh, Mary, oh, Mary,' till it became a sound that had no meaning.

His dead weight on her was the same as any other man's; the same crumpled feeling, the same stickiness, cooling as fast in the twilight. She wanted more than anything to shove him off her, and had only mercy enough to lie still.

When he raised his head she saw his eyes were wet. 'This is the happiest hour of my life,' he whispered huskily.

She strained her neck up to kiss one of his eyelids. The whole thing was impossible.

Kneeling up, searching in the foliage for his missing button, Daffy spoke more calmly. 'Let's come back here, to this very spot, every May Eve,' he said, 'for the rest of our lives.'

Mary stopped brushing leaves off her skirt, and stared at him. 'But Daffy,' she began warily, 'we won't be in Monmouth always.' always.'

'Where else will we be?'

A watchman's wooden rattle started up in Mary's head. 'There won't be enough room for us here.'

'But Monmouth is growing apace,' he told her cheerfully. 'I believe it could soon bear two staymakers, and two dressmakers. We may need to begin in another town in the Marches, but it won't be long until we come home.'

Home. The word was bitter in her mouth. This was where the trap lay, she saw now. 'London's that,' she said, almost gruffly. 'My home is nowhere else. I'm a London girl.' The word was bitter in her mouth. This was where the trap lay, she saw now. 'London's that,' she said, almost gruffly. 'My home is nowhere else. I'm a London girl.'

Daffy shook his head gently, as if at a child. 'Not any more, my sweetling. If you could see how much you've changed-'

Anger made spots behind Mary's eyes. 'I'm the same as I ever was. And as for you, I thought you claimed to have ambition!' she spat at him. 'I didn't know you planned to eke out your days in a miserable crow town.'

His face went white. 'If it's good enough for the Joneses-'

'Pox on the Joneses!' she roared. 'I want more from life than to end up a poor man's Mrs. Jones.'

Daffy's hands were twined together like wet rope. He wore the painful expression of someone trying to recall the second verse of a song. 'Mary, Mary,' he remonstrated, 'all else aside, how could we think of bringing up our children in the big city?'

She stared at him. For a moment she'd forgotten how little he knew about her. He had no idea who she really was: a barren, raddled whore. His innocence repelled her as much as her own deceit.

She and he were too unlike, she saw now; they could no more combine than oil and water. They wanted different things in life and had different plans for getting them. Mary's path and Daffy's had briefly crossed in this blossoming wood before snaking away in opposite directions. The old happy ending had no place in this particular story. How could she have been such a fool?

'I've made a mistake,' she said quietly, and turned to pick up her basket.

'What do you mean?'

'I can't marry you.'

'Not quite yet, I know,' Daffy blundered on, 'but in good time-'

How could she ever have thought of mating herself to such a plodding, ordinary man? 'Never,' said Mary, walking out of the wood.

John Niblett the coach driver brought news that the war with France was over at last after seven years, and the Government had ordered public rejoicings in every town. But Mr. Jones spent the evening poring over the Bristol Mercury, Bristol Mercury, and announced over griddle cakes at supper that this so-called peace was a disgrace. 'We beat the dogs fair and square, and now we're handing them back Guadaloupe and Martinique!' and announced over griddle cakes at supper that this so-called peace was a disgrace. 'We beat the dogs fair and square, and now we're handing them back Guadaloupe and Martinique!'

Mary would have liked to stroll down to the bonfire on Chippenham Meadow-they said there was going to be dancing-but she feared to meet Daffy there. The man's eyes were as red as a rash these days. He kept hovering in her vicinity, as if he had some grand, decisive declaration to make. But she made sure never to be alone with him. Nothing he could say would make any difference.

Within a few weeks the blooming trees were scraggy again. Mrs. Jones said bloom fall was the season that always made her sad; it came on so quickly. The blossoms nailed to the walls of the house faded and curled after a few weeks, but their smell grew stronger.

To Abi, they always seemed to have a tang of rot. Late one warm May night she lay on her side of the bed and stared out the tiny window. The shutter had been left wide open to catch some air. There was nothing to see but an indigo sky. Beside her, Mary Saunders let out a long breath between her teeth.

'You fight with your fellow?' asked Abi.

Mary's head turned towards her as quickly as a bird's. 'What fellow?'

Abi snorted mildly. As if the way Daffy had been looking at Mary recently wasn't enough to spark tinder.

Mary turned her back and spoke very low into the darkness. 'He's not my fellow.'

That meant yes. A bad fight. Abi waited; sometimes silence was the loudest question.

'Besides,' said Mary, flouncing onto her back and staring up at the low ceiling, 'I wager I'll get farther on my own than if I harness myself to such a dumb ox.'

'Where you going to?'

'Never you mind.'

Again, Abi waited. She had learned not to be hurt by such automatic rebuffs. This girl had to be handled like a sharp-clawed cat.