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damp and cold. Besides, she’ll only have to blush a while and then they’ll all be shipmates, just you see. There’s plenty women in this town’d be
glad to share a room with three or four Americans. Young Mrs Norris can take her pick!’ Her laugh was uninhibited and unoffending. She was a woman in her forties, playful, forthright,
savoury, with some remains of beauty in her face if not her figure. Hers was a case for stays, although she was the sort whose stoutness was a charm. ‘There, that’s your bed dressed for
the night,’ she said. ‘You’ll sleep like royalty. Don’t be surprised if I creep in between the sheets, it looks so clean and welcoming …’ Aymer reddened. He put
his hand across his mouth. ‘Now, that’s me being comical,’ she said, noting Aymer’s discomposure. ‘I’ll not go uninvited anywhere. So there’s your sheets
and there’s your bed, and anything you need from me is there for asking. You’ll not want soap, I see.’ She nodded at the stack of soap in Aymer’s hands. ‘They must be
Smith’s.’
    ‘Please take some, if you want.’
    ‘I like a luxury,’ she said, and took three bars, and curtsied, plumply.
    Aymer was alarmed. He couldn’t be sure if she’d been flirting. What was the ‘anything’ she’d offered him? Food? Hearthside hospitality? Or sin? Would she try to
slip between his sheets – and legs – at night? And if she did, would Aymer take her in his long, thin arms, or would he flee, in his nightshirt, onto the balcony and down the wooden
staircase to the cold and salty courtyard? Were blushes really so much healthier than cold and damp? He didn’t have the courage to find out.
    ‘There is no need to move the other beds,’ he said. ‘I’ll share a room with the Americans. I think we must allow the Norrises to keep their privacy.’
    ‘No, Mr Smith. I cannot let you sleep with sailors of that kind. Same as I said, they’re rough. Their language will offend you, and their nighttime habits …’
    ‘Well, then, perhaps it would be better if Mr Norris and his wife were to share with me. Shift out two beds for sailors, and let the other two remain. Our beds are curtained, so we can
count on privacy. My language and my nighttime habits can give no offence. Besides, I am already acquainted with Mr Norris and he has introduced his wife. Perhaps, if my business can be completed
rapidly, I will depart on the coastal packet tomorrow, and then this room can offer total privacy again.’
    ‘That is a rare suggestion and a kindly one.’
    ‘Surely I can make this sacrifice for just one night.’ Aymer put the remaining two bars of soap on the widest of the beds.
    O TTO WOULD NOT get a bed. There were no volunteers to share with him, though there were many townspeople in the inn’s courtyard keen to stand
around and stare, to examine his face, to try a smile, to test a word or two, to comprehend this first encounter with an African. What did they know except what they’d learned at fairs or
from sailors or in the farthing pamphlets they’d bought from pedlars? That Africans were ruled by dogs or dined on dogs or smelled like dogs? That Africans didn’t wear clothes and had
no tongues, no names, no navels? That black men didn’t dream? The Wherrytowners did their best to catch sight of a navel or a tongue, to find his oddities. ‘Well, Blackie,’ one
man whispered in Otto’s ear, ‘what news from the Devil?’ But he didn’t wait for a reply.
    Otto was conscious and in less pain. His ankle wounds had crusted. The bruises on his forehead were already blue. His eyesight was restored. He sat on the seaweed in the cart, eyes closed, and
did his best to think of other things. But the oddness of the leafless trees he’d seen, the hardness of the sky, the stony torpor of the land, the mud, unsettled him so much that he was close
both to tears and to fury. He had to concentrate, amid the din, to steel himself against the courtyard ghosts.