It was a sorry-looking basket in comparison to those she’d carried in the past, but Lily made no comment, knowing even with the coins she could give Jean from her own wages, every penny must be stretched as far as possible.

Their new lodgings were more distant from the marketplace than their old ones at Kinloch’s Close. The walk home took them longer. Bessie dragged her feet, complaining, until finally Lily made a game of trying to guess the secret occupations of the people they were passing.

“See now, he’s an outlaw,” Lily said in hushed tones of a carter standing at his horse’s head, his hat pulled low. “And in the night he rides that horse upon the roads, and robs all wealthy men who cross his path.”

Delighted, Bessie pointed to a merchant in his shop door opposite. “Who’s that?”

“Why, that’s the king’s own spy, who’s sent to catch the outlaw, but at every turn has been outwitted, because some men are not what they do appear to be.”

They’d finally reached the narrow land within the cramped and sunless close where Jean had found them lodgings on the fourth floor. A man had just come down the turnpike stair, and at the bottom turned to call up to a third floor window where a woman leaned out wearing nothing but her shift, her fair hair tumbled round her shoulders, and waved back to him.

Bessie tugged at Lily’s hand and nodded at the woman, wanting still to play the game, “Who’s that?”

“A princess,” Lily said, “trapped in a tower, by a—”

Jean broke in, and put her foot down. “No. She’s not a princess. She’s a common whore.”

Lily had, of course, heard people use that word before. She knew that it was bad to be one, and that it was also bad to call somebody one when they were not, although her knowledge of the meaning of the word itself was vague.

Jean warned, “Don’t look at her or speak to her,” and Lily kept her head down and obeyed, not even glancing upward when the woman called “Good morrow” to them in a mocking tone.

But Bessie, who could no more keep from questioning than breathing, barely waited until they were inside their own lodgings before asking, “What’s a whore?”

“A woman who takes money from a man,” said Jean, “for pleasing him, in ways ye are too young to understand. But it is wrong, and she is wicked. Why our landlord lets her bide here, I will never understand. Were it in my hands, I’d chase her to the gutter where she does belong, and she could take her fancy clothes and false smiles there and try to turn men’s heads, and good luck to her. There’s no place for whores among us decent folk.”

Lily had questions, but she held them to herself because she’d noticed that beside the bed there was a newly empty place upon the wall. She swallowed down the hurtful words that tried to rise, knowing that Jean was struggling every day to make do with the money she had set aside—“against hard times, if they should come” had always been Jean’s reasoning if anyone had asked why she was saving pennies in days past, and Lily knew times were hard now. But still the empty place would need addressing, so she asked Jean, “Did ye sell my daddie’s sword?”