It is best if they don’t enter the train depot together. Whoever is looking for them, is looking for three scions of their gentry, two youths and a girl. There may be leaflets out for all they know, eyes at every train station. But they won’t be interested in a dirty tramp in stolen clothes; nor in a pit girl and her companion. Or so they hope. Charlie is to go first. A head start of three hours. Enough time not to connect the one stranger with the other two. And for Thomas to rest.

Before he goes, Charlie steps over to Livia. Thomas looks away, immerses himself in the study of his boots. Giving them privacy. Even so, saying good-bye is not easy. They don’t know how to. They have never touched each other in daylight.

In the end it is Charlie who extends his hand. Livia takes it shyly. They may have been strangers, meeting at a dinner party, only they don’t let go at once but stand there, her hand small between his fingers. Charlie considers kissing her palm. But she pulls it away before he has raised it even halfway to his mouth.

“Too dirty,” she whispers, staring at her black little hand in disgust. “Be careful, Charlie.”

“And you.”

Then it’s Thomas’s turn. Charlie walks over to him, crouches down where he is sitting on the ground.

“Look after her, will you? For me.”

Thomas nods but his look is gaunt. There is a fear there Charlie cannot fathom.

“It’s I who should be going,” Thomas says after a while.

“We decided. It makes sense.”

Thomas shrugs. “Be careful what you say to Renfrew. Don’t give away too much.”

“I will only say what I can. We gave Lady Naylor our word. Not to speak of certain things. She may be a rebel, or a villain. But our word is our word.”

Then he hugs his friend, turns, and leaves.

ф

Charlie need not have worried that he would stand out in the little hamlet that serves as a loading station. There are plenty of strange men milling in the street, dressed in a wide variety of costumes and rarely very clean. Women, too, young and old, and a gaggle of urchins pelting one another with rocks. Workers, traders, unemployed miners. A dandy without boots dragging a donkey by its bridle. A hulking Scot in a greatcoat shouting drunken swear words at the sky, his accent bending every vowel. A consumptive woman, thin as a rail, selling charred, bone-studded meats from a grill she has set up by the side of the road. A beggar dressed in little more than a shift, flashing the stumps of his legs at every passerby.