‘I’ll put it ‘ere then,’ she said helplessly, and moved my pitcher of lemonade and put the phial and the water on the bedside table. ‘You helps yourself when you wants it.’

She looked around the room for something that came within her experience. ‘I’ll make your fire up again!’ she said brightly, and went to the hearth.

The little part of me which had clung to life like an obstinate succubus in the wagon through beatings, even through the deadly pain in my heart on that night when she died, held me tight now; and ordered my throat to cry out. I strained and strained to speak, looking desperately from her turned back as she worked on the fire, to the little glass of water and the laudanum alongside it. If the laudanum took the pain away I would sleep. If I slept I would not be weary when the crisis of the fever came and then I might fight it. I might win.

I tried to cry out, but all I could make were little choking noises which she could not even hear above the rattle of the fire irons and the poker knocking ashes in the grate. She got a blaze going and straightened up. The room which had been hot and stuffy was now a furnace, the firelight stabbed my eyes with its fierce heat.

‘That’s better!’ she said. She approached the bed a little closer. ‘’Ave you got everythink you want then?’ she looked around. The lemonade was out of reach, I could not raise myself up to get the laudanum. ‘Got everythink? Good.’

‘Emily,’ I croaked.

She was instantly alarmed. ‘Don’t you try to talk now,’ she said. She came a little closer but she did not dare to touch me. She had been ordered too often out of the good rooms, told to use the back stairs, to avoid the Quality and to curtsey low when they went past. She was too well schooled to dare to lay a finger on me. ‘Don’t you try to talk,’ she said again.

She scuttered towards the door and dipped a little curtsey, and was gone. I tried to call her back but my throat was swollen so badly I could make no sound. I stared at the painted ceiling, at the pretty frieze at the top of the walls showing cupids and love-birds in white and gold. I remembered Meridon the gypsy and her sly toughness and I heaved myself upwards in my bed.

It was no good, I was Meridon no longer. I was little Miss Sarah Lacey with my throat closing so tight that I could not breathe and the smell of stale sweat and death all around me, and the pain behind my eyes and in the very bones of my face so bad that I could have cried except my tears had dried in the heat of the fever.