In a world of his own making, any man can be God. Langton had made his own world, and then he’d brought me with him when he fled it. I thought it was because he was a member of that race of men who cannot be men without their slaves.

A copy of his letter to George Benham lay across my lap. I’d been the one to copy it twice onto vellum, one copy to send and one to keep, but then I’d been the one to write every word Langton had put in ink for years.

My dear G,

I enclose the amended manuscript. Crania. It saddens me that the work became the wedge between us. But I’ll admit that you were right, about one thing at least. A good scientist merely searches for the answer to the question posed, but the one whose name history will record reaches for the question no one has even thought to ask. There couldn’t be a better moment for proof that the differences between the varieties of men are not mere flukes of nature but purposeful design. It is even more important than ever, now that England seems hell-bent on destroying the colonies with the prospect of emancipation, so soon after abolishing the trade.

Her politicians need reminding. A mother doesn’t eat her young. Not a tender mother at any rate.

I thought that was where we started. How did our paths diverge? Be that as it may, I still believe a careful reading of the final corrected version will lead you to reconsider your stance. With your name attached again, the work would grow wings. There must be publishers in England (though I know they can seldom be counted on to see beyond their own noses) who will recognize the commercial and scientific merit in this.

Pressing matters will keep me here for some time, and it seems that it will take me longer to reach you than even the infernal post. Therefore, this must be entrusted for now to the impersonal medium of paper and ink.

I will follow it as soon as I can.

Yours &c.,

John

George Benham. The important man. The one who’d started the work on Crania, then written to say he’d changed his mind. The thought that my path was likely to cross his sent a shudder through me. Crania itself nudged my leg, lying beside me on the bench. Langton’s magnum opus. I’d written that too, in my best curling copperplate. Yet I had to fight the urge to haul it out into the muck.

‘You’re as eager to try your new London manners as you were to put on that dress.’ Langton’s lips peeled into a grimace, his words choked to a halt. His illness sometimes stopped them entirely.

I sprang out of my seat, pressed his hand in mine. ‘Cramp?’

‘I need rum.’

‘No. You don’t.’

‘What the devil do you know about anything?’ He jerked his hand away, knuckled it to my breastbone, pushed me back. But then the trembling came over him again, fingers, wrists, shoulders. ‘This isn’t Paradise, girl. You can’t just . . . clatter out things that have been . . . private between us . . .’