'That what?' asked the nurse, dangerously.

'That you have to make a ... a trade of your body.'

Mrs. Ash was rooted to the spot. She let herself imagine smashing this girl's head against the wall. 'It is hardly the same,' she said icily.

'No. Not at all.' With another sob: 'Forgive me.'

The nurse stared up at the harlot. Her triumph was suddenly mixed with exhaustion. She knew she wouldn't go and wake Mrs. Jones. Not tonight, not just yet. She would hold onto this moment as long as she liked. Maybe a day, maybe a month. Such a gorgeous sensation, might and mercy mixed. And the girl abased on the steps and weeping like a baby, knowing that it was in the older woman's power to ruin her, any hour of any day. 'I'm going to my bed now,' Mrs. Ash told her with the gravity of a queen.

Mary, watching the dark figure disappear in the stairwell below, blinked the tears back into her sockets. She stood up and examined the damage; the seam was ripped all along her waist. The old bitch would pay for that, somehow, she promised herself. The hypocrisy of the woman, too-not to admit that they'd both lived by renting themselves out. Cunny or tit, what was the difference?

In her own room, Mary sat on the edge of the bed, softly. Her heart was still crashing around from rib to rib. Now there in Mrs. Ash, thought Mary, was an example of a woman who had risked nothing and ended up with nothing. That's what you got for being a servant of no ambition: a shrunken life, hung up like a gibbet as a warning to others.

Abi was face down in the pillow; how tired she must have been to have slept through all that racket outside the door. Mary bent and pulled her bag out from under the bed. Her stocking was full, voluptuous with weight. She spilled the coins into her lap, very gently. They covered the width of her dress. The scaly heft of them gratified her hands.

Mary tried not to think of Mrs. Jones's face, if Mrs. Ash did decide to tell. Instead she concentrated on the coins beneath her hands. If all else failed, she had this: some kind of future, spread out in her lap. A few coins were dull, others gleaming, and they all bore different faces. Funny how she couldn't tell, now, whether any one of them had been purchased with a week's hard labour with her needle or a quarter-hour behind a tavern. She rubbed a few coins between the ruffles at her elbows, to polish them. She'd tested them all by biting, as soon as she got them, but tonight she was haunted by the idea that in her absence they might somehow have been replaced with counterfeits, or rusted away. She chose one and closed her teeth on it, despite a pang from a rotten molar. She'd like to eat the coin, she thought. To swallow them all, and keep them safe in the gilded cavern of her body.

Abi couldn't stay still any longer. When Mary had slid the bag under the bed and slipped between the sheets, Abi went up on her elbow and whispered, 'Mary.'

'What is it?'

'Talked to a Quaker man today.'

'Did you?' Absently. 'So will he come speak to the mistress?'

'No,' said Abi bleakly.

Mary turned her head towards her. 'You should run away,' she said, on impulse.

Abi curled her lip. What kind of nonsense was that?

'I mean it,' said the girl with animation. 'You wouldn't stand for such treatment if you'd a spark of spirit in you.'

Resentment flared up in the maid-of-all-work. She flung back the blanket and hauled her nightshirt up to the top of her thigh. She put her finger to the old brand.

'What's that?' asked Mary, staring. 'Another master's name?'

'Look close,' said Abi gruffly.

Mary brought the wavering candle near enough to the skin to make out the letter R, stamped in black.

'That means Runaway,' Abi told her before she could ask. 'Means I done it before, in Barbados. Means I know running gets you nowhere.'

'Tell me,' said Mary eagerly. 'What happened? Was it long ago?'

Abi wrenched up the blanket and turned on her side. 'Told you enough,' she said through clenched teeth.

'All right then, don't tell me. All I'll say,' added Mary, 'is that your chances are better in this country. If you got as far as London, they'd never find you in the crowds.'

Confusion filled Abi's head, and a sort of grief. Was the girl trying to get rid of her? Did she want the whole bed to herself? Did she not have any need of Abi's company in the long nights? 'What you care, anyway?' she asked hoarsely.

Mary shrugged. 'I just ... it seems to me that masters shouldn't be allowed to think they own people, that's all.' She leaned over and snuffed out the candle with her fingers.

The maid-of-all-work lay and brooded on this for a minute. Then she spoke up in the darkness. 'If I did.'

'Mm?'

'If I run. You tell me where to go? In London?'

'Of course I could,' said Mary with animation.

'You give me money?'

A cold, prickling silence filled up the bed.

'Mary?'

'What money?' came the answer, almost formal.

Abi was suddenly sick of these games. 'You think I deaf?' She didn't care if her voice could be heard in the room below. 'You think I don't know what money sounds?'

'It's none of your business.'

'You got a stocking full!'

'I earned it.'

'I need some. I never get away without some money.'

Mary lay as stiff as wood.

'Please!'

'I'm sorry for you, Abi, but no. As a friend of mine used to say, Every girl for herself. Every girl for herself.'

It occurred to Abi now how easy it would be to pick up the pillow and press it down on this girl's haughty face.

'Oh, and by the way, I know how much I have, down to the last ha'penny,' Mary threatened softly. 'And you know I'd be able to smell your hands on it if you ever so much as touched it.'

Abi's fingers were full of murder. She put them in her mouth and bit down.

In the dog days of August, hives walked their way up Mary's ribs; her sleeves stuck to the crooks of her elbows. The air was full of dust from the hay harvest. For the first time in months Mary missed London, found herself pining for all the worst things about it, even the reek of the Thames lying low.

Trade was slack. There was a spinster called Rhona Davies who'd recently set up as a dressmaker over on Wye Street; she offered nothing fancy, but her low prices were tempting old customers away from the Joneses. At the house on Inch Lane, Mary sweated over the accounts, while Mrs. Jones nibbled her thumbnail. Missing sums, outstanding bills, bad debts. Everything depended on the Morgans, that was about the sum of it. If Mrs. Jones-rather than some smooth Bristol dressmaker, or even, God forbid, a London firm-got the commission for young Miss Anna's coming-out trousseau, the family on Inch Lane would be eating good beef all winter. Most of their other patrons were off taking the waters or shut up in their houses with gigantic paper fans; nobody was in a paying humour.

Over breakfast, dinner, and supper, on the stairs and in the yard, Mary felt herself being watched by Mrs. Ash like a Recording Angel. Any day, on a whim, this woman could choose to bring down destruction on her head. That was what tortured Mary: the not knowing whether or when. She kept her eyes low and did nothing to provoke the nurse. When one morning Hetta clung to Mary's skirts and said she wanted to learn to embroider, Mary had to push her off: 'Go back to Mrs. Ash.'

The child heard the hint of poison in the maid's voice, and clearly thought it was for herself; her lip hung down. But what could she do, Mary asked herself? Mrs. Ash smiled placidly and held out her hand for Hetta.

The girl never went near the Crow's Nest, in case Mrs. Ash ever came to hear of it; she got Mrs. Jones's cider from the Green Oak instead, and told her mistress it was much fresher. On the rare occasions when she saw the Reverend Cadwaladyr, at market or in the church porch after service, she looked away. Her hoard of coins had stopped growing. They stuck to her palms when she counted them. They were all she had, but they weren't enough.

She and Abi shared a room without meeting each other's eyes; at night they lay rigid, inches apart.

The air reeked of fermentation from the cider brewing. Mary's forehead bore a permanent crease. 'Whatever's the matter with you these days?' Mrs. Jones asked one afternoon when they were down in the kitchen, pressing sheets.

'Blame the heat,' said Mary shortly.

Right through August, storms blew up every few days; no sooner was washing pinned up on the line than it was soaked through again. The farmers complained of mildew in the corn. Mary had a sense of waiting, but for what? These days all she was doing was killing time.

Mrs. Morgan walked in on the first of September for the final fitting of her velvet slammerkin. For all the heat, she was still swathed in her black fur-edged cape. Reverently Mrs. Jones lifted down the snowy velvet dress and spread it in Mrs. Morgan's lap to show how the snakes and apples on its train caught the light. 'Just think how the silver thread will set off madam's hair!' she said.

Meaning, thought Mary, bored, that Mrs. Morgan was as grey as an old dog.

'How this will eclipse them all at Bath!' trilled Mrs. Jones.

Yes, even if a mule wore it, thought Mary. Her hives were driving her demented. To distract herself from the itch, she stroked the nap of the velvet slammerkin with one pin-callused finger.

'It's fine work,' the Honourable Member's wife conceded at last. 'Well done, Mrs. Jones.'

The dressmaker bobbed gratefully.

'For the winter, I think I'll have you make me a riding-habit, as well as three complete suits of clothes for my daughter's first season. And your husband might fit us both for some dress stays.'

Mrs. Jones nodded, glowing. Mary could tell she was too excited to speak. Their eyes met over Mrs. Morgan's shoulder, and Mrs. Jones gave the girl a tiny wink, as if to say that their worries were over. The dressmaker picked up the dress, and Mary rushed to help her hold it like a cloud of white over Mrs. Morgan's head so madam could worm her way into it.

Mary stood back and considered. What an almighty waste of a year's embroidery! Inside her silver-veined splendour, the woman looked plainer than ever. Stretched over the gigantic hoop and layers of petticoats, the slammerkin seemed to fill the room, bobbing against the trunks and almost knocking over a chair. It was magnificent, in this humble setting, but it was also quite ridiculous. Mary itched to try it on. How much better she would carry it off than Mrs. Morgan. Mary's breasts were twice the size, for starters. A laugh bubbled up in her throat.

'Why is your maid looking at me so insolently, Mrs. Jones?'

Mary blinked, and looked down at her hands. She'd forgotten to be careful.

'Was she, madam?' said Mrs. Jones, breathless.

'Indeed she was.'

The girl had turned her back, now. She pretended to be sorting through some jackets hanging from the ceiling; she buried her head among them and bit her lips to stop the laugh from coming out.

'Well, Miss, what have you to say for yourself?'

Mrs. Morgan's voice, tight as a chicken's, increased Mary's merriment. She pressed her face against a train of cool satin. 'I'm sorry, I'm sure.' Her words came out muffled.

'You will look at me when you address me!'

Mary turned, with a face as rigid as china.

'High time you learned some respect for your betters.'

The word hung in the air between them. Mary kept her mouth sealed shut. But she couldn't prevent one eyebrow lifting. A gesture that whispered, You, my better? You, my better?

Now her mistress's eyes flicked between the two of them in panic.

'I beg your pardon, madam,' Mary said to Mrs. Morgan, adding a deep curtsy, to be on the safe side.

'She meant no harm.' Mrs. Jones gave her patron a paralysed smile.

Mrs. Morgan sighed and turned aside to examine her profile in the long mirror. 'I would not keep a girl so pert, myself,' she remarked.

'No, madam,' said the dressmaker. 'She's not generally so. It's the heat, I do believe.'

'I doubt she would have reached such a height of impudence without some encouragement, Mrs. Jones.'

No answer to that.

The Honourable Member's wife lifted her arms resignedly to indicate that Mrs. Jones should begin undoing the slammerkin. 'The neckline a quarter-inch lower, I think.'

'Very good, madam.'

She stood there like a doll with her arms in the air. And Mary, watching from under her lowered lids, realised all at once that the rich were useless. The more servants they depended on, the feebler they grew. Parasites!

But she went over to help her mistress with a perfect humility of manner. She meant to behave herself for the rest of the fitting. And all was well until, in the struggle to hoist the narrow bodice off over her head, Mrs. Morgan's shift fell open and her left breast flopped over the edge of her stays. It resembled nothing so much as a lightly fried egg, livid and elongated, quivering on the edge of the plate. Mary had never seen anything so funny in her life. She looked up and saw the Honourable Member's wife, who had noticed what the girl was looking at. A huge and terrible laugh spilled out of Mary's mouth before she even knew it was coming. She clamped a hand over her lips, but it was too late.

What Mary remembered afterwards, as she stood in the hall, against the closed door-with her heart banging almost loud enough to drown out Mrs. Morgan's shouts: 'By Christ, I say she laughed at me! I tell you, the slut guffawed in my face!'-was not Mrs. Morgan's face, but Mrs. Jones's. Lost, dreading, like a child in a wood.

Mrs. Jones couldn't eat a bite of supper. Afterwards, she waited till she was alone with her husband.

'Jane?'

She looked up, startled at the first name.