'London, where else?' said Mary at last, as if the darkness were squeezing the words out of her.

'When?'

'Not anytime soon, but someday. There's no use going back till I have good clothes and money. Turn up empty-handed in the city,' said Mary scornfully, 'you might as well lie down in the road for the carthorses to trample.'

Abi shut her eyes and suddenly was back in Bristol, the day the ship from Barbados came in to port, nine years ago, in the chilliest rain she'd ever known. Her skin where the brass collar had been was naked, raw. The streets were no wider than outstretched arms, as crammed with faces as a trash heap with rats, and every face was white. While Abi had been waiting for the doctor to collect all his trunks, an enormous rattling cart had borne down on her, and it had occurred to her to step in front of it. What had stopped her, she wondered now? Cowardice? Or fear that her spirit, set loose in those tangled streets, would never find its way home to Africa?

'I ask for wages, like you said,' she mentioned.

'Why, I never thought you'd dare,' said Mary, animated. 'And?'

Abi shook her head mutely.

Mary let out a puff of contemptuous breath. 'A girl I used to know in London, she once told me, masters are like cullies.'

'Cullies?'

'You know,' the girl said hastily, 'men that go to whores. Masters are like that to servants; they use you up and toss you aside like paper. What did he say, when you asked?'

'She,' Abi corrected her. 'Was the mistress.'

A tiny pause, while Mary registered this. 'Oh,' she said at last, 'I thought it would have been the master. Still, Mrs. Jones can't go against his word, can she? When it comes down to it,' she added bitterly, 'a wife's only a kind of upper servant.'

'She say maybe give me present, at Christmas.' Abi heard the flatness of her own words.

She found her hand being pulled along the sheet and held very tight. It was a curious sensation, mildly uncomfortable, but also comforting. She tried to remember the last time anyone had held her hand like that: without trying to make it do anything.

Mary's narrow fingers traced the scar that went right through Abi's hand, from back to palm. 'What happened here?' she whispered. 'I know it was a knife, but what really happened? Was it long ago?'

Abi let out a tiny sigh. For a while she didn't say anything; long enough that she thought the girl might have drifted off. But the grip on her ragged palm never loosened. 'I come into house-' Abi began at last.

'This house?'

'No, no. Big estate in Barbados. Was house slave by then. Easier. Saved my life, you know? Wouldn't lasted half as long in the fields.'

'Go on.'

She squirmed a little. She'd never put words to this memory before, let alone English. 'So that day the door standing open.'

'Yes?'

'And master, he there on the floor, all bloody.'

Mary gave a little whistle of excitement.

'There was big knife,' Abi went on, 'stick up out of his eye. It look so bad.'

'What did you do?'

'Try take it out, but it stuck fast.'

'Ugh!'

Abi let out a little painful laugh. 'So then neighbour men run in, and find me with blood.'

'On your hands?'

'All over.'

'And they think you've done it?' asked Mary, leaning up on one elbow.

'They sure,' Abi corrected her, 'because of blood. And they want-what you call it? After killing.'

'A trial?'

Abi cleared her throat in frustration. 'A yes. Yes to killing.'

'A confession?'

'That the word. But I won't give no yes. Won't say I done nothing. Not me.'

'So they let you go?'

Abi stared up at the dark ceiling. What was the point of relating the facts when this girl just didn't understand what it was like, back on the island?

'Go on,' whispered Mary, like a child cheated of her bedtime story.

'So they put me on kitchen table,' said Abi weightily, 'tell me they going stick the knife into one bit and another bit till I say yes, then after they going kill me quick.'

The attic was quiet. 'My God.'

'They start with this hand here,' said Abi, tugging it out of Mary's grasp.

'So what stopped them from going on?'

'Another neighbour come in then, say they catched the man with blood on his shirt.'

'Which man?' asked Mary, bewildered.

'The killing one. He got master's moneybag in pocket.'

'Just in time for you!'

Abi let out a small snort. 'You don't know nothing.'

'Well, tell me, then!'

'Then the neighbours take me to auction, sell me for pay for master's funeral.'

'How much did you fetch?'

'Twenty pound,' Abi told her. Was the girl impressed by this figure, she wondered, or did she consider it trifling? 'It would be more,' she added a little defensively, 'except for my hand bleeding.'

Mary lay very still beside her.

All in all, Abi was glad she'd told this old story. It made it smaller, she found, to wrap it in words and fold it away. She rolled over now and pushed her face under the pillow, waiting for sleep.

On Mary's birthday, it so happened that Mr. Channing came back to Monmouth from the horse races and paid nine months of tailoring bills in full. Mr. Jones told his wife to bring the best port up from its hiding place in the scullery, for a double celebration. Mr. Channing rode off after a single glass, but Mr. Jones sat up after dinner toasting his king and country, his patrons, and all his family. 'To our maid Mary, the best of young women, with heartiest felicitations on completing her sixteenth year!'

They raised their glasses.

'To Henrietta Jones,' he declared next, 'the Belle of the West!'

'Why am I a bell?' Hetta demanded, tugging at her father's cuff-ruffle as he drank.

'Because you make so much noise,' suggested Mrs. Ash without looking up from her Bible.

'No, my dear,' he said, lifting her onto his lap, 'it's a different kind of bell, that means beautiful lady.' And indeed as he looked down at her snow-white head, it did seem to him that Hetta was all he could ask for in a daughter. And for some men, that would be enough; some men wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night from dreams of driving in a carriage beside their fine handsome son.

She bounced violently on his knee and started up the old game. 'Fafa, where did your leg go?'

'Did I never tell you?' His eyes widened. 'One night I was fast asleep and a big rat chewed it off.'

'He didn't!' Her voice was delicious with fear.

'He did. Has he never woken you up nibbling your toes?'

'Don't scare the child,' laughed Mrs. Jones, looking up from her work.

On his ninth glass of port, her husband sensed a delightful cloudiness about his head. His throat opened, and words spilled out; he even insisted on wetting Hetta's lips with port, 'to give her a taste for the best.' After his wife had gone off with Mrs. Ash to put the child to bed, Mr. Jones couldn't seem to move from his chair. It was so very comfortable; the liquor had fitted every curve of horsehair to his body. At last only his maid Mary remained by the bottle, her head resting on one fist, listening.

'Oh, indeed, great plans, great plans. In a few years, Mary, I shall buy up a draper's business to combine with ours. The Joneses of Monmouth will be known as the most complete purveyors of sartorial goods west of Bristol.' He relished the genteel ring of the words.

'How many years are a few?' asked Mary.

Mr. Jones shrugged, insouciant. 'Certainly by the time our next boy is born.' He could see the girl come alert at the phrase, but he went on. 'My intelligencers tell me that our trade is likely to have tripled in value by then.'

'Really, sir.'

Did she disbelieve him? There was a dry edge to the girl's answers sometimes. Like her mother Su Rhys before her. What Mr. Jones didn't let himself remember in his wife's presence was that he'd never much liked her best friend. 'Hetta will go to a school for young ladies,' he hurried on, 'and my son will become a gentleman.'

'How can you be sure?' Mary asked.

'I shall send him to the best tutors-'

'No, but,' she hesitated, clearly struggling for tact, 'how do you know you will have another child?'

Mr. Jones beamed down at her. The port was singing in his veins. 'My wife is young yet. God will provide.' He leaned his elbows on the table until his face was a foot from hers. 'He owes me,' he whispered, too loudly.

Mary Saunders leaned back a little.

'Don't you see?' Mr. Jones had never explained his conviction to anyone. He'd tried to tell his wife once, but she covered her ears and called it sacrilegious talk. 'It's a sort of... bargain.' bargain.'

The girl watched him warily.

'The way I see it, Mary,' he went on, slurring just a little, 'the Maker owes me the price of a leg.'

His grin elicited a tiny one from her.

'It'll be worth it in the end.' He glanced down at the sharp fold of his velvet breeches. 'Every time it aches where there's no flesh to ache, I've reminded myself of that. I shall have a son who'll live to make me proud, with an income to support him in style. He'll grow up to be a lawyer, maybe, or a physician,' he said, his voice booming in the little parlour. 'He'll drive a coach and six, and his footmen will wear livery. He'll write Esquire after his name!' Mr. Jones was laughing helplessly, but he'd never been more serious. 'He shall, Mary, I tell you he shall. Was not the celebrated versifier a plain linen-draper's son?'

Her forehead wrinkled up.

'You know the man. Pott. Post. Mr. Pond? The poet.' His brains were getting fuzzy.

'Pope?'

'That's it, good girl. A little frayed scrap of a man with a hump, no taller than Hetta.'

'Was he?' she asked doubtfully.

'He was,' said Mr. Jones. 'And has that diminished his fame? Not at all.' A vast yawn cracked his face now. 'What about you, my girl, on this festive day of yours?' he asked benevolently, tilting his cup to get the last few drops of liquor.

'Me?'

'What are your own ... aspirations, if you have any?' He bent forward now to look more closely into Mary's pale face. She'd be quite a beauty, it occurred to him, if only she'd smile more often. 'Sixteen is still young, but in time you may hope to marry, raise a family.' He leaned closer. 'Will you set your cap at some strapping Welshman, eh?'

'No.' Her answer was chilly.

He'd already decided he must have been mistaken about her and Daffy; certainly, the way they were skulking from room to room these days suggested that they couldn't stand the sight of each other. 'Still, you never know what might happen,' he said pleasantly. 'I'll tell you a strange story, now, about a gentleman of my acquaintance. On his travels in Africa a few years ago he captured this black, you see, and brought him home to the village of Dolgellau. Didn't he teach the fellow English and Welsh, and call him John Ystunllyn, and the black is said to be able to pronounce his own name as perfect as a Welshman! The fellow's both gardener and steward there now, on a good wage, and courting one of the maids, last I heard.'

The girl looked blankly back at him.

'So you see, Mary, you might think at first that your lot here is a lowly one, but if you bear patiently and do your best, you might rise a degree in the end.'

She shook her head. 'I'll go back to London,' she said flatly.

'In whose service?' he asked.

Mary looked away, and nibbled on her thumb. 'I could be an actress, maybe.'

'An actress?' His mouth began to curl in shock and amusement.

'Or a rich man's wife. Something that lets me wear silk all day. Something to lift me above the mob.'