‘Sir,’ I blurted. ‘I was not expecting to be left here . . . not like this – that is, I have not been a maid, sir . . . for many years. I –’

‘Yes. Oh, yes. I know what you’ve been.’

‘What I’ve been?’ I wanted to flee, not stand there discussing things I’d crossed an ocean to leave behind. Oh, yes, you know, I thought. You’re responsible for it.

But a maid waits to be dismissed; she doesn’t ask. Nor had I lit his fires yet.

He made a long study of me before finally speaking again. ‘Have you heard of Francis Williams?’

‘No, sir.’

He rustled some papers, glanced from them to the top of my head. Lifted his quill. ‘Take your hair down.’

‘What?’

No. No, no, no. My head whipped up, and a memory whipped into it. There’d been a woman at Paradise, named Sukey, who’d lost her hands in the crusher. I’d seen her sometimes, squatting behind the cow-shed, a coin between her teeth. It was charity, Langton said, allowing her to stay on, share the old women’s cabin. ‘One grateful nigger pays a thousand dividends.’ Hitched breeches, a sly grin.

There was only one kind of work Sukey could do, with no hands. When she saw me watching her, my face so sour, she hawked and spat, and the coin flew loose. ‘You wait. Massa soon show you what all nigger women born for.’

I answered Benham, spoke the word out loud. ‘No.’

But just then a fist galloped across his door, and Linux pushed through it, carrying a tray. ‘Oh! Begging your pardon, sir. I didn’t know you weren’t alone.’

‘As you can see, I am not.’

‘No. No. Well –’ She stood for a minute, at a loss, darted her eyes at me. ‘I thought to clear your breakfast plates.’ She scooted forward, came up with the egg-streaked saucer in one hand, the tray in the other. ‘I’ve just admitted Lady Catherine downstairs, sir.’

‘Surely that’s for you to tell Meg.’

‘Very well, sir.’ She looked from him to me, chest quivering.

He waited for the door to close behind her. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, girl, I meant only to make a . . . study of your hair. But . . . no matter . . . There is a time to every purpose under the Heaven . . . Where was I? Oh, yes, Williams. Williams! Williams was a Jamaican black, like you.’ He dipped into the cat’s head for a pinch of snuff. ‘It’s an interesting tale, you know. The Duke of Montagu wagered that Williams could swallow down an education as well as your average Englishman. Found a tutor to stuff him to the gills with the whole lot ‒ Latin, Greek, multiplication, philosophy. No doubt the flogging and the fagging too. And young Williams proved himself a marvel, by some accounts. Genius where you’d least expect it, like getting oranges from Richmond . . . And ‒’ He flinched the powder up his nose. Snuff drifted onto the table. ‘‒ and, after all that, he couldn’t do anything with himself, though not for want of trying. Ended up going back to Jamaica, I believe, running some little school there, for piccaninnies. Wrote a few awful poems. Truly terrible. Let me see . . . I think I remember one . . .’ He leaned his head back.