I was black as a fly in butter, and had no choice but to stand out ‒ and stand there too, pinned to the street, as if my own legs were stuck. Spittle flew at the back of my neck. When I turned I saw one of the barrow-women duck her head and fidget a potato back onto the pile, counting on her fingers, like they were an abacus. I lifted a gloved hand to wipe my neck. Told myself my dress was serge. She was the one who looked slovenly, and low, dressed in linsey with a dirty kerchief. I told myself I looked like a lady. At the very least a higher class of maid. Even if Langton only let me dress as such so no one would see what I was, while I travelled with him.

I told myself it was my head that was filled with learning. I’d read Mr Defoe’s Essay on Literature the week before, settled under the skylight with water tapping at the hull and night creeping above, thinking how confident a man must be to write down his own musings, expecting anybody else to be interested in reading them.

Sometimes I picture all that reading and writing as something packed inside me. Dangerous as gunpowder. Where has it got me, in the end?

I brushed my skirts down again, set my shoulders back, glanced towards Langton. A pair of girls climbed off the back of a cart, slowed to a stop when they saw me, gawping, looking as if they’d reach out and tug at me. The river shook itself out like a sheet. Dark as pewter. Everything in the whole world seemed to be on its way in or on its way out of London, the water waltzing cargo. For a moment, I wondered what it would be like to plunge, skirts flying, heart in full sail, flow myself through all that silvered water. Let it take me somewhere.

A thread of wind shivered through the ships’ flags.

One small step. Another. Forward, forward. I stared down at my feet. How much time passed, while I stood there? Then noise came flooding back. Birds’ cries. Scuffling breaths of carriage horses. Slowly, the world fell back into place. You can knock the world down, smash its teeth, kick it to pieces, and still it will click back into its remembered habits, like any seasoned slave.

When I looked up, the girls were clambering away, down a street that twisted into darkness. I wanted to follow. A picture came into my head. Me, flying down the blind street, finding a stone cottage, like a coin tucked up a sleeve. Shelves of books, a crackling fire. Nothing else inside it but time. And a woman, though I couldn’t see her face. I’d live there. And I’d write. There’d be no law against it. I’d write a novel. The house would be sturdy around us. Plain and clean and warm.

But no one like me has ever written a novel in the history of the world.