Back at Levenhall, Madame left us to go upstairs, calling for hot water, shaking off her damp skirts as she went, and Pru and I trudged back down, where the silver was waiting to be polished, set out on the table, like rib bones.

That night, I dreamed it was me being paraded through the Strand, the man calling out ahead of me: Step up, step up, lay-dees, gents! Come see the darky! All the way from the Indies. She’ll cook you in her pot! She’ll steal your babies, and cook them too!

MISS PRUDENCE RATTRAY, under-maid of Mr George Benham, sworn

Mr Pettigrew: Miss Rattray, you come here today to give the prisoner a character?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Tell these gentlemen, then, in your own words.

A. I don’t see how Frances – the prisoner, begging your pardon. Sir, I don’t see how she could have done this thing. I have heard such talk of how she must have been a savage and that’s the reason she did it. It made me so angry I knew I must come here to tell what I knew of her.

Q. What did you know of her?

A. She had two thumbs, sir, like the rest of us. [Laughter, gallery admonished by the court.] Mrs Linux said she was uppish, but I didn’t really see it. It’s true that she was not over-fond of taking advice, unless she got it in a book. Her own worst enemy, she was. I always told her I knew what her trouble was. I wanted to be a lady’s maid, but she wanted to be the lady. I’d never known a darky before ‒ you see them in the street, the soldiers and the beggars mostly, and there’d been a kitchen maid at one of the houses a few streets over from us, a young lass I sometimes saw in passing out on the steps pulling on her pipe. What I mean to say is, we are not accustomed to seeing them and don’t know their ways, I suppose. But with Frances – the prisoner, I mean – I found nothing so strange about her. She wasn’t used to some of the ways of an English house, perhaps, and she had very thin blood, she felt the cold, she did. But after she started waiting on Madame, a change came on her, her spirits improved. She was very fond of Madame. Truth is, Madame’s spirits improved also. The way Frances spoke of her. Well. Her feelings were so tender towards Madame I don’t see how she would have done this.

Q. And her feelings towards Mr Benham?

A. Sir. All the world loved Mr Benham except his wife.

Chapter Sixteen

White men dine with each other no matter their differences, and very often because of them. When Benham invited Langton to dinner, perhaps it was for both reasons.

They glared at each other, even as they came in, Madame a few paces behind, Langton’s eyes as murked as the dregs in a rum bottle. Seeing him again cut like a cow-hide whip, though I’d braced myself for it. I still felt a bitter snag in my throat. I fancied that he limped, that his shoulders drooped. New wrinkles crawled all over him. He was sweating in his black suit, took his seat without even looking at me. As soon as I laid eyes on him, I saw the old Frances. Skirts trailing like shadows. Thoughts swarming quick and sharp as wasps. Lanterns to be lit, quills to be hardened, books to be fetched down from their perches: Vesalius, Le Cat, Buffon. He’d want buns, buttered and warm; he’d need help to undress; he’d want her to write, scratch out, write again. Always writing. My memory wobbled. I snapped my eyes open, sipped small breaths that scraped through me. The table glowing white under its cloth, nodding yellow flowers, dark plums in silver bowls. Pru on one side, me opposite, so I stared at the back of his head, and his hand, fisted and trembling, around his spoon.