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the chair the girl made no move. Whatever anyone said about her, she would not let it show. Nothing could hurt her any more. Not after her heart had been broken, her baby dead and her body ruined. She would be a princess now, a princess who knew nothing of pain and sadness. She was new; she was spotless. She sat taller in the chair and regarded the man, the woman and the girl with the same intensity as they regarded her.
    â€˜Perhaps we should take her into the library, Cassandra.’
    â€˜Take her away, more like.’ The man opened the door and yelled into the house, ‘Finiefs! Dammit, man, I don’t pay you to sit upon your—’
    Suddenly a man in servant’s livery came into the room. He was puffing with exertion.
    Mr Worrall nodded. ‘Ah, Mr Finiefs.’
    The black-haired man dipped in a bow. ‘Sir?’
    â€˜I want this girl on the trap and back to the Bristol poorhouse.’
    The girl in the chair smiled as if this meant nothing, as if she had never heard the word and had no idea what the thing was. After all, the person she was now had never spent a night in such a place. Ever.
    â€˜Papa! Please,’ Cassandra begged.
    â€˜Yes, Samuel, one night, let her stay one night,’ Mrs Worrall said. ‘I should like to hear her speak – they had no idea of her language?’
    Cassandra shook her head. ‘And, Mama, you should have seen her when she saw this room. I do believe it means something to her . . .’
    â€˜Take her through to the library.’ Mrs Worrall opened the door; her husband made a face. ‘Samuel, please. This is a chance to study someone at close quarters. She is most interesting, it is clear.’
    â€˜She is a foreign beggar! In Bristol we have Negro beggars, Lascar beggars – Mr Finiefs, I wager, in Athens or wherever you were born, the beggars are as dark as this one.’
    â€˜Oh, darker indeed, sir, madam.’
    Cassandra had taken the girl’s hand. ‘Come,’ she said, and led her back across the marble tiled hall and into the library.
    If the Chinese drawing room had been a source of wonder, the library, with its rows and rows of books, had been a revelation. Of course she could read. Every year she had won an orange at Sunday school in the Primitive Baptist chapel in Witheridge for her knowledge of the scriptures. Where had her first stories come from? All those stories of marvels and enchantment? And here were more books than she had ever seen in all her seventeen years. And weren’t stories more rewarding than life? Stories had never let her down, had never promised anything they did not deliver.
    She and Peg had shared a bed above their father’s workshop. Peg was scared of everything: she shied at thunderstorms, owls, the cries of foxes, and she had told her tales – of princesses riding across mountains on white horses, warrior maids fighting dragons, unicorns and leopards. Princesses who could hunt and fish, swim and climb, relying on no one but themselves.
    â€˜Mama does love books,’ Cassandra whispered.
    The Princess remembered where and who she was. A story made flesh. She must not forget.
    The adults were bickering now. Mr Worrall was close to winning. The Princess thought that if she did not take her future in hand she would be sleeping on the floor of the women’s derelicts ward in the Bristol poorhouse.
    She let go of Cassandra and turned and faced Mrs Worrall. One thing she had learned was that servants never looked straight at their superiors, never met their eyes. That was for equals. But wasn’t she a princess now? She was better than the whole room of them. She must not avert her eyes.
    The Princess saluted, looked Mrs Worrall straight in the eye and smiled. She summoned up all those old languages she had ever heard – on the London streets, in the hedgerows near the Romany camps she’d spied on with her sister. She saluted again. ‘
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