The turnkeys step towards me, hands in fists. The darkness is in my head again, same as it was that night. The sharp pain of my fingers digging into wood is the only thing keeping me in the room. I look up into the gallery. Every eye staring. The bodies nodding, all blood and teeth.

Then the turnkeys are behind me, pinning my hands. My shackles clank and rattle at my back. But I’m not done yet.

‘Even being the offspring of debauchery and vice,’ I cry out, ‘I am sure I did not do this thing!’

Jessop leaps to his feet, leans over the table, his hands either side of his brief.

‘That was quite a . . . tale.’ Looking at him, I feel nothing but fatigue. I rest my hands on the railing. ‘You are a monster. You say it yourself. I say you are the monster who killed Mr and Mrs Benham.’

I shake my head. ‘That is not true.’

‘It was an act of savagery, what was done to them.’ It isn’t a question, so I don’t answer. He sways forward, gaze sharp as a wasp-sting. ‘Will you tell us what services you performed, at the brothel where you worked?’

I hesitate. ‘The School-house was a spanking parlour.’

‘Where you administered whippings?’

I flick my head.

‘Is that a yes?’ He lifts one of his papers, glances down. ‘You spoke of John Langton. John Langton’s estate. John Langton’s experiments. A large part of the Paradise estate was burned to the ground, I understand, in ’twenty-five, just before you came here. Following a slave rebellion. Is that true?’

‘There was no rebellion,’ I say.

‘It was a savage place.’

‘There are savage goings-on here, also.’

‘You’ve been made bitter by those experiences. You’ve been made savage yourself.’ He speaks almost gently now, needle rather than blade. ‘Be that as it may. Mr Benham took you in, showed you a kindness. Which you repaid by thieving ‒’

‘No.’

‘By seeking to address yourself to his wife.’

I draw stale air into my lungs. He wants to terrify me, to make me doubt myself. But I have held this one true thing, from that day to this: ‘I loved her. She loved me.’

But, in the vast courtroom, the words come out hollow as quill barrels, even to my own ears. I hear the shuffling, the whispers. I can imagine what they all must think. I can imagine what you must think, that I’m sinking my own ship. But no matter. There was love.

‘Your mistress loved you?’ He scoffs and shrugs his gown, gives me a long stare, makes sure I’m the first to look away. ‘So that was why you argued with your master.’

‘No.’

‘Why you killed him.’

‘No.’

‘You threatened them with death,’ he rattles on, as if I haven’t spoken at all, ‘and then you made good on that threat.’

I see the gold light shining against the drapes. I see all their shocked faces, weapons formed against me. Meg’s darky maid! How she follows her! How she torments her! A strange one, I’ve always thought it. Something in the eyes . . . How dare she? How dare she? I see him. Olaudah Cambridge. Madame, wavering, pulling away from me.