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By Root 1120 0

of leaving with the thaw had been put to one side, as it were. She had pumped Mr. Jones about Bristol, where he'd done his apprenticeship. He claimed it was the next to greatest city after London—not that he'd ever seen London himself—but nothing he'd described to Mary made it sound much better than Monmouth. She'd asked Daffy about other towns within a few days' ride, but all he'd offered was a history of their settlement from the Romans on, and a list of their principal exports. They sounded a shabby lot. If Mary couldn't yet risk returning to London—and Caesar's knife—it seemed to her that she might as well stay where she was, for the moment, and eat her fill, and earn a wage.

Waking in the night, she was soothed by the faint lines of the attic room. At least she had a share in a bed instead of just a straw mattress. At least the blankets had no fleas. There weren't any holes in these walls for the wind to whistle through. No landlady to thud up the stairs; no killer hammering on the door. Mary was clean now; no one touched her. She lay motionless, conjuring up the worst of London, to make herself grateful. Here on Inch Lane she could watch the moon through glass, instead of following its naked light down an alley where in all likelihood Doll still sat, blue and ruined, crumbling with the first thaw.

Mary rolled over, with her back against Abi's steady heat. She wouldn't think about Doll. She wouldn't dwell on what was past.

Abi was in that state between waking and sleeping when the girl's voice came out of the dark, beside her ear. 'Abi,' in a whisper. 'Are you awake?' She heard Mary Saunders's head shift and thump the pillow into place. Then the hiss came again. 'I can't sleep. I'm too tired.'

Abi groaned and tucked her face into her cupped hand, which lay between them.

'It's not right, how the Joneses keep you,' remarked Mary.

Abi pulled her head off the pillow like a turtle. She weighed the remark: not just what was said, but why.

'A friend of mine,' Mary remarked, 'used to say, Never give up your liberty.'

Abi brooded over the phrase.

'You know what liberty means? Belonging to yourself?'

'Never had that,' said Abi finally.

'You must have,' said Mary a little impatiently. 'Before you were a slave, I mean. When you were a child back in Africa.'

Abi stretched out on her back and considered the matter. 'No,' she told Mary slowly, 'I belong to king then.'

'What, King George?'

'No, our king,' Abi said. 'Me and my mother and many—hundreds—children and wives, we all belong to king back then.'

'What,' asked Mary, disconcerted, 'you were a slave, back in Africa?'

Abi shrugged uncomfortably. 'Well. It was family. He was father.'

'What, your own father kept you as a slave?'

This girl didn't understand the first thing. Abi yawned hugely. 'Not a bad life there. Little work, plenty food.'

'But he sold you to the whites?'

Abi tucked her face into the crook of her arm. She never liked remembering this bit. Her words were muffled. 'He needed guns.'

The silence lasted so long that she was almost beginning to slip into sleep, when the girl spoke up again. 'Why does it say Smith on your shoulder?'

'That was a master.'

'The one who brought you to England?'

'No. Another one.'

'How many masters did you have, in Barbados?' said Mary curiously.

'Don't remember.'

'In London, you know,' remarked Mary, 'there's a great many people like you.'

'Like me?' Abi repeated hoarsely, lifting her head.

'Black in the face,' said Mary. Then, with a tiny giggle, All over, I mean to say.'

This was news to Abi. She cleared her throat; it sounded too loud in the slumbrous house. 'How many?' she whispered.

She could feel the tug in the blankets as the girl shrugged. 'Lots.'

'But how many?' Since the day the doctor had brought her to Monmouth, Abi had counted no more than three dark faces, and they were all footboys to visiting gentry; none of them lived in the town.

'How should I know?' answered Mary with a touch of asperity. 'Two in any busy street, I'd say.'

Abi let herself savour the image. 'Their masters let them out