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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.