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Manning — who'd gone into the forest with the pedlar and had her ears clipped for doing it — perhaps her own aunt, but had thought them rarities in the scheme of things. Whoring as a corporate activity hadn't arisen in Puritan Massachusetts.
    She was learning. The air was heavy with the stink of sin. Sin was painted on the walls, incorporated into the pillars, steeped in the floor, sucking at her. This evil Ladyship trapped girls into you-know-whattery. The Searcher was in her pay, a procuress who had never heard of Margaret Hughes. She must get out of here.
    An acolyte, Kinyans, an ugly little man, had entered the salon with trays and was setting out food that made her mouth water. Whatever was wrong in this temple of sin, it didn't extend to its kitchens. And she was famished. If she was going to have to make an escape, she wasn't going to be able to do it unless she ate.
    Carefully, she watched Dorinda and the others eating, then grabbed a chicken leg for herself.
    Kinyans had picked up her slate. '"I do search for my aunt. Margaret Hughes",' he read. His eyebrows went up. 'Well, well.'
    'Never heard of her,' said Alania through a full mouth.
    'Before your time,' said Kinyans. 'But we knew her, didn't we, Ladyship?' There was something in the man's voice. Penitence's hastily swallowed chicken caught in her throat.
    'Was she one of them Cromwell shipped to the West Indies, Ladyship?' asked Sabina.
    There had been a change in the room, some of its menace had withdrawn. Her Ladyship was stroking the beads around her thick, white neck and not looking at anything. She knows. Where's my aunt?
    'Bloody Cromwell,' said Dorinda.
    Penitence moved over to stand square in front of Her Ladyship.
    Slowly, the woman's eyes moved into focus on Penitence's face. There was still calculation in them, they were no less cold, but it was a different calculation and a different cold. 'She's dead.'
    Penitence sagged.
    Her Ladyship stood up. 'Can you sew?'
    'What?'
    'Can you sew? Pull yourself together. Can you sew?'
    Penitence nodded.
    'I'll give you board and lodging. Kinyans, get the skivvy to make her up a bed in the attic. Dorinda, take her up and see her settled.'
    'Isn't she going to—?' began Alania.
    'I said take her up. I'll talk to her after.'
    Penitence followed Dorinda up the curving staircase that led out of the salon because she didn't know what else to do; the object that had motivated her life these last months had gone, leaving it directionless.
    Had Her Ladyship maintained her menacing sweetness, she might still have attempted to leave, but the woman's voice had reverted to a brusqueness at once more natural to it and reminiscent of the shortness with which Penitence had been addressed for most of her life. She was responding to dislike as the safer emotion. She was too tired to do anything else.
    'Them's our rooms.' Dorinda shifted her shoulders to indicate that they were better than the attic. They were progressing along the clerestory around the top of the salon. The six or so doors leading to 'our rooms' were closed, each of them distinguished by a china name-plate which Penitence was too depressed to read.
    'You're up here,' said Dorinda. She opened a door on to a tiny, curving wooden staircase. Here, on its third storey, the house reverted to an ungilded, untidy maze. The light from the candelabra Dorinda carried flickered into little passages which led off from the landing at the top of the stairs. There were unexpected windows and others that had been blocked in, steps ran up and down to different floor-levels, ceilings were low at some points, at others were replaced by the high rafters of the roof.
    The skivvy sleeps here,' said Dorinda, with disdain. She led on and lifted the latch of a small door: 'You're here.'
    Penitence had to stoop to enter. Dorinda's candelabra revealed a large oblong room in which the only decoration was cobwebs. Plywood packing cases were stacked one side. The height and shape of two