You’re adding to the burden, Mercy Wilkins, said a nagging voice inside, the one that had started as soft as a newborn’s breath but was growing into the clatter of a dozen coaches over cobblestone. And now that Twiggy’s out of work, she won’t need you—if she ever did—and you’ll be just another mouth to feed.

Another mouth to feed. That was why her older sister, Patience, had left over the winter and why two of her younger brothers had long since moved out and now lived on the docks. At fourteen and twelve, the boys could fend for themselves. That still left five children at home, including Mercy, with never enough food to go around.

Mercy quickened her pace until she was practically stepping on Twiggy’s heels. “Maybe Ash can find more night-soil work until the factory hires you back.”

“The poor man hardly sleeps now.” Twiggy opened the main door. “You don’t expect me to ask him to do more, do you?”

Mercy didn’t answer as she trudged up the sagging staircase behind Twiggy. All she had to do was picture Ash’s exhausted face when he arrived home in the wee hours of the morning, threw his reeking body onto the floor, and fell asleep in an instant.

While the rest of the city slept, Ash spent hours crawling through privy seats into underground cesspools that were built into basements or back gardens away from homes. He shoveled the solid waste into baskets that were later carted off to the countryside.

The stench from cleaning the cesspools was too disturbing for the daytime, and so men like Ash made a little extra money doing the foul work at night on the side.

Whenever he cleaned cesspools, he managed to sleep for an hour or two before rising and heading off to his day job collecting coal ash from houses and businesses around the city. He and a partner hauled load after load to the yard along the River Thames where the ashes were then sold to brickmakers.

Ash was one of the lucky ones who hadn’t been let go after the market had collapsed several years ago. He and Twiggy had celebrated their good fortune the way they did on most occasions, by lots of hugging and kissing beneath the blankets.

Those were the times when Mercy felt the sorriest for Ash and most ashamed of Twiggy. Surely he questioned where Twiggy got the extra food and coal. And yet if he did, he never let on. He just kept on loving Twiggy and every babe she bore.

“Maybe it’s time for you to think about getting yourself a husband,” Twiggy said breathlessly as they reached the top landing. “When I was your age, Ash and me were already married.”