‘There are so many things private between us. I won’t be able to say a word.’

He looked away, mouth narrowed. His hands, curled in his lap, twitched like sleeping dogs and his shoulders curled too.

Dying men don’t just dwell on the past: they invent it.

‘I never touched you,’ he said.

I moved back to my own seat, rested my head against the cushion, held myself stiff as the leather, taking care not to look at him. When he told me not to get too snug, I paid him no mind.

‘This blasted traffic,’ he said, peering out. ‘That’s London for you. Everything moves fast, until you see it’s moving in circles. Not a single thing has taken a forward step in two hundred years.’

He decided we’d get out near London Bridge, find a waterman, elbowing through the crowd. I had to trot so I didn’t get swallowed in it, nerves stirred raw, thinking of all the things that could go wrong. He might fall, lose his footing, suffer an attack, or simply turn a corner without me, and vanish. There were a hundred ways I could lose sight of him. And then what would become of me?

The cold seemed to carry its own smell, like raw meat, and came on me sudden as a cutpurse. London air, wet as a kiss. I shivered and reached up to tug on my shawl. ‘Only way to get used to it is to be out in it,’ Langton shouted back. Heads turned. They stared here, same way the sailors had stared on the Pride, when there was no risk of being caught. I felt watched as a clock. To be black in a sea of whites is to wish to be invisible.

I kept my eyes fastened to Langton’s back, his new black coat stretched tight as a cheek, lifted my feet between mounds of dung, and fat, slithering puddles. Each time I came too close, forgetting to slow my pace to his, he snapped his teeth. ‘Keep some space between us, girl.’ As if there was any distance that could magic the two of us into gentleman and maid, instead of what they thought they saw: a slow Creole, his mulatta whore.

I didn’t have my land legs back, stopped to lean against a wall and let the wave in my head build up and die down. Then I had to run to catch up with Langton again. Three times I chased, not once did he look back. A heavy feeling poured into me.

But it lifted when we reached the river, and my heart took flight. I felt a wind inside me gathering speed.

The Pride’s captain had had a map tacked up in the galley; many a morning I’d traced the crooked seam of the Thames along to its bucket-shaped dip, reading the names aloud. Southwark, Bermondsey, Wapping. On paper, it looked like a meandering curve stitched through the city’s chest. But maps never tell the whole truth. For London is a river with a city around it. People milled along the bank, leaning over the railing to watch the ships and the building works, which Langton said were for the new bridge. I forgot about the awful smell, found myself wishing I could linger. Across the water, I could see the arches of the old bridge, the clawing spires and rooflines. The wooden hulls clacked against each other like oyster shells in a bucket. The watermen reminded me of nigger-drivers, the way they rode high on their rowboats, spat out from under their hats. Langton said he’d go down to haggle a ride, told me I’d better stay right where he left me. Fragments flew back to me: ‘. . . to the Strand . . . me and my . . . my wife’s serving girl.’