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being together, whispering, crouching behind one of the stone boxes, Sal read out the writing along the side, one slow word at a time. His job was to keep track of the words she had already read, so she could concentrate on the one at hand, because it was too hard to read and to remember all at once.
    Sal’s voice was especially sweet getting her tongue around the knots of words: Susannah Wood Wife of Mr James Wood Mathematical Instrument Maker , she said. She was tapped nine times and had 161 gallons of water taken from her without ever lamenting her case or fearing the operation . Thornhill blurted out, Like a bladder of sack, sounds like , and saw her trying not to laugh. Oh Will , she said, think of the the poor soul , and us finding it a joke! She took his hand so he felt how soft and small it was within the stiff claw of his own. Smiled, so he saw her dimple: just the one, her face itself winking at him.
    He stared out at the river, where the tide was beginning to swirl the water upstream, trying to find the words to say what pressed up out of his heart. There is something , he started, and felt a fool, not being able to go on. He started again, heard himself loud and definite, Soon’s they make me a freeman, first thing I’ll do is marry you , then he thought she might laugh, a prentice from Tanner’s Lane saying such a thing, but she did not.
    Yes, Will , she said. And I’ll wait for you . Her eyes searched his face, serious for once. He could see her looking separately at his eyes, his mouth, back to his eyes again, reading behind the words the truth that was written on his heart. He looked into her eyes, close enough to see the tiny copy of himself there.
    He longed for the seven years to run their course. He had only to let time pass, and another life would be waiting for him.
    ~
    They wed the very day of his freedom, just before he turned twenty-two. Mr Middleton let him have his second-best wherry by way of a wedding gift, and they took a room not far from Mermaid Row, where husband and wife could make free with each other in a way the place behind the tomb of Susannah Wood had never allowed.
    It turned out that Sal was a saucy one in bed. That first night, she came up close against him. She was afraid, she said, of the dark. Took his arm, needing, she said, something by way of support. He felt the warmth of her, her noisy breath tickling his ear. They had to keep things quiet, for the walls were paper-thin. There was a man in the next room whose every cough was as clear as if he were in the bed with them.
    What happened next was nothing loud or forceful. It hardly even seemed as decided as an action. It felt merely an unthought process of nature, a seed bursting out of the dirt or a flower unfurling from the bud.
    The night became the best part of every day. Now they had a bed to themselves, she loved to curl around him, a candle guttering on the stool. Her breasts lolled out in a way that shocked and aroused him. She would peel a tangerine and feed him the segments slippery from her own warm mouth, and when they had done all the things with tangerines and mouths that could be done, and the candle had snuffed itself out in a pool of tallow, they lay together and told each other stories.
    Sal liked to tell about Cobham Hall, where her mother had been in service before marrying Mr Middleton, and where she had gone with her mother for a month once when she was a girl. A few things stayed in her memory: the carriageway up to the entrance, a green tunnel of poplars. Starched damask on the tables, stiff as hide, even in the servants’ quarters. And the proper ways of doing things. There had been a grapevine there, she said, and once or twice the treat of grapes in the servants’ dining hall. The housekeeper had scolded her for taking a single grape from a bunch. Eat what you like, the old thing told me , she said. But never spoil the bunch, get the grape-scissors and cut a sprig . She turned to Thornhill and