‘That was a good hanging,’ she said. ‘Merry as a cricket he went up, and dressed like a real dasher. He wore a coat, Miss Nellie, the colour of sparrowgrass, and he sang and bowed to all the watchers. So I don’t know as this new device is an advancement. A hanging gives you value for your waiting about and I wish they wouldn’t of moved them. Newgate’s too far for me to go now, with my legs.’

Morphew told her she had a fine pair of legs and I believe she blushed, although her face was always so red it was hard to say. I could only wonder that Twyvil had any legs, let alone that Morphew had seen them. She seemed to me to roll around the kitchen on some kind of ball-like base.

The guillotine machine was a novelty, put where it could remind King Louis that times were changing. And perhaps it might have served that purpose, made him consider, given him the chance to be a wiser King, but he was undone by the actions of a well-meaning friend. The Duke of Brunswick, who was married to our own King George’s sister, had marched towards the French frontier with a great army and pledged to release Louis and his queen from their confinement and put them back on the throne.

Morphew said, ‘Well, that done it. Heart alive, that put the cat in the pigeon loft. Them Frenchies worn’t having no cabbage-head interfering in their affairs. Soon as they heard Brunswick was getting close they was out on the streets, beating to arms.’

Priests were snatched from their seminaries. Houses were searched and people were taken away: news-sheet writers sympathetic to the King and Queen, anyone who had been their friend or loyal servant or even looked the part. It seemed that in France it was enough to be seen wearing a good pair of boots to get yourself thrown into prison or run through with a sabre. Morphew said it was a start.

Twyvil said, ‘A start of what?’

He said, ‘Of certain people being made to understand the rightful order of things. Of lessons being larned.’

Some were tried, others were butchered where they stood in the street and some, it was said, were roasted and made into pies. If there was one fearful image that kept me awake it was the pies, for hadn’t Papi been famous for his pies and wasn’t he famous now for being the Prince of Wales’s loyal steward? If the French fever spread to England I felt I knew what Papi’s fate would be.

Morphew especially relished telling the story of the Princesse de Lamballe, who had been brought before a tribunal and given the chance to review her loyalties. If she’d refused to swear that she loved equality and liberty more than she loved her King and Queen had she anyone to blame for her fate but herself ? She had been handed to the mob and her head carried on a pike beneath the royal lodging, so the Queen could look out and see her particular friend one last time.

Twyvil, who had heard the story several times already, said, ‘But she didn’t see it. She fainted away, poor soul.’

Morphew said, ‘Poor soul, my eye. She’s an unnatural beast what has fed off the life blood of innocent little children.’

‘Well,’ Twyvil said, ‘you’ve changed your tune. All the years I’ve knowed you, Dick Morphew, you’ve never had a good word to say for the Frenchies. Not even the little innocent ones.’

Morphew blew his nose very thoroughly, a thing he always did when facts threatened to get in the way of his opinion.

I said, ‘So will the killing stop, if King Louis sees the rightful order of things?’

But Morphew said it was late in the day and a nation’s ills weren’t so easily cured. He said, ‘That in’t only the King and Queen. That’s all his nobs, all his lords and ladies. And I’ll venture to say some of them won’t never larn their lesson. They’ll all have to go.’

‘But then who will be left?’

He said, ‘You’re still a young ’un, Miss Nellie. You ain’t seen enough of the world to understand. But I’ll quote you a forhinstance. If I was to see a rat in my stable I wouldn’t go just after him. I’d go after all his friends and relations too and make a thorough job of it. Because if you leave but two of them they’ll soon make twenty. See?’

But as Twyvil pointed out, there were rats in our stables, always had been and always would be, so where did that leave the Revolution? Would it carry on till there was no one left but executioners, and babies still in their cradles? And Morphew, who knew when he had reached his limit, drew the discussion to a close with his usual, ‘mark my words’ and took out his handkerchief again.

Papi was circumspect. He had every hope that the first snap of cold weather would clear the French mob from the streets, and if that failed that the Duke of Brunswick would soon be at the gates of Paris. He thought it unlikely the unrest would spread to England, for whatever else you might say about an English lord he didn’t abandon his tenants and leave them to starve in the hedgerows. He sat with them at their harvest suppers and played cricket with them too if they asked him. Papi said, ‘Alvays I am prepared. Also your Onkel Christoff. Ve heff eggs in many bazgets. Vee kem easy to Enkland, vee can easy go avay.’

‘But where would we go?’ I asked him. America, he said. There was always America. ‘Does Mother know?’

‘Nussing for her to know,’ he said. ‘Only zat I vill look after her. Nellie, you remember Jack Buzzard? At Brighton?’

He slipped the question in so smoothly.

I did remember Jack, or rather I remembered his name and the taste of the muscadine water ice he’d made for the Prince of Wales’s birthday.

He said, ‘Jack comes tonight to eat viz us.’

I said, ‘Good. You’re not often home for dinner.’

‘Liebchen,’ he said, ‘listen to Papi. Do you like Jack?’ It was upon me before I saw what was coming.

‘Like him?’ I said. ‘I only saw him once in my life.’

‘But could you like him?’

‘How can I say? I don’t know him.’

‘Miss,’ he said, ‘you are seffenteen. Soon Jack vill be surty. Is gut age for man to marry.’

He said Jack Buzzard was a skilled craftsman, that he planned to open his own establishment and it might be a profitable investment, a good way of providing for my future.

I said, ‘So it’s a question of business. He’s coming to inspect the merchandise.’

Papi banged his hand on the table.

‘Jesu Maria!’ he said. ‘Jack Buzzard is gut man. Vill you heff him or no?’

I didn’t like to cross my father. He was a kind man and I knew he wanted the best for me. In the ordinary way of things it’s reckoned to be no bad thing for a girl to show some flirtatious resistance when she first receives an offer, but my marked face deprived me of that privilege.

I said, ‘How can I say? I haven’t been in his company. I’ve never thought of him. I’ve never thought of anyone as a husband. Who would ever want me with this face?’

I saw a tear come to his eye.

‘Mausi,’ he whispered, and I knew I was forgiven. ‘Miss’ and ‘Little Mouse’ signified the ebb tide and the high water of my place in Papi’s affections. So then it was my turn to say something conciliatory, to give him hope even though my true intention was to find myself a man like Tom Garth.

I said, ‘Well, let me meet him, Papi. First let me know him a little.’

Which Papi took to be near enough my consent. He slapped the table again, but this time in joy.

‘Nellie, Mauschen!’ he cried. ‘You sink he comes tomorrow viz horse und cart, takes you avay? Nein, nein. First he vill make hiss bissness. Oh yes. He vill be most best convectioner in all London.’

Mother had been listening outside the door. She had begun the day with a headache but what she’d overheard had cured her.

‘Oh, Nellie,’ she kept saying, over and over, ‘vot a gut Papi you heff, to find you husband. Vass Glück, vass Segen. Only sink! Married!!’

But I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even recall Jack Buzzard’s face. And I was very anxious that Mother should say nothing to Miss Tod, our Herald Extraordinary. I knew she would parley my reluctant agreement to consider an offer of marriage into a firm betrothal, then everyone would know about it, from Charing Cross to Piccadilly and there’d be no way out.

I hardly know how I got through the day. I’d woken that morning without a worry in the world. Then suddenly I was under an obligation. I was being offered something I had no business refusing. And to make matters worse I wasn’t allowed even a minute of solitude, for Mother was in such a girlish mood, pink-cheeked and simpering, trying my hair this way and that. I kept her talking on any subject I could think of. I feared that if I once fell silent she would start to give me some womanly advice I would rather not hear.

At five o’clock sharp Jack Buzzard arrived and I understood why I’d been unable to picture him. He wasn’t handsome and he wasn’t ugly. He was just himself, with light brown hair and a square, serious face. Before dinner was served we were left alone in the best drawing room for fully ten minutes and it was clear he thought we were coming to a definite understanding. Papi had misrepresented me.

I told him I was too young to marry.

‘You won’t be,’ he said. ‘Give it a year or two, you’ll be just right. And that suits me. I’ve business to attend to first. I’m going to be my own master, me.’

I suggested he could do better.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re from a solid family, sensible with money, well thought of. But you’re not too tied to them and that’s a good thing. I couldn’t be doing with a wife who’s always running home to her mother.’