When first I met Molly, it was almost twenty years ago; I was but seventeen, and fleeing (again) the agents of Madame Dugal, and she, she was easily as young as Lucy, though not nearly so confident, nor so cruel. She had been working at her uncle’s inn for maybe five days when I arrived there, had traveled one hundred and six leagues by stage from her father’s home near Malchurch, which was then suffering quite thoroughly from the perennial potato blight which has yet to convince them something in Harrowdale hates tubers. She was sent off to her uncle so her parents would have one less mouth to feed, and it was understood this favor was great enough at the time that food and board would stand in lieu of wages, even the meager five crowns six specified as “pin money” for hospitality domestics in the Imperial records of that year. (In fact, when she took leave of her uncle some two years later—Mortimer, I believe his name was—he attempted to bill her for the “education and training in the trade” he had provided.) She left home wearing a worn brown skirt of her mother’s, an undershirt whose patches had patches, her father’s third-best sweater, far too big, mismatched woolen socks, her wooden shoes, and a pair of scratchy grey knickers that bunched and lumped and chafed her thighs and buttocks as she sat on one hard and splintery coach seat after another. In Adenpool, in the mountains, her third day on the road, she found an old and battered carpet bag in the refuse heap behind the inn, and she took it, her heart in her throat, terrified that she would be caught out, accused of stealing, clamped in the pillory in the town square for nicking a ratty, moldy, threadbare old carpet bag thrown out by some traveling entrepreneur because a brass clasp had broken, and she cleaned it that night, washing it with stale water from the pitcher in the common room and darning it by candlelight in the garderobe, all so that she would not have to endure the shame of traveling empty-handed. She carried that carpet bag with her across two hundred Imperial miles of rough road and then through the three—or is it four?—inns (and one brothel) in which she has worked. She has it still, I know, I am certain, for all that I never saw it this last time we met. Molly was never one to throw things away. —Except those knickers. When she arrived at Mortimer’s, her pretty bottom rubbed raw, the skirt with a new rip along one seam, she was shown to the bathhouse behind the inn, given a starchy black dress and white apron and freshly laundered mob cap, and told to make herself presentable. And when she had stripped off her clothing, and scrubbed herself free of road dust, and rinsed out her hair and squeezed it dry, she turned to put those rough grey knickers back on—and couldn’t. She slipped the black dress over her head, tied on the apron, settled the cap on her head, bundled her old clothes into a tight ball, and dropped the knickers on the rag heap on her way back inside.

Now, she was to room with the other domestic, a girl named Ginger, who would show her her duties, and the routines of the inn, and what would be expected of her. They were to share a tiny room hived off the attic, far away from the main rooms, at the end of a rickety flight of stairs and across a long and dusty hall steeply rooved and lit only by cracks in the shingles above. Imagine her surprise, when she opened the door to her new home, dressed in an uncomfortable dress too short by far, and loose on her skinny frame (already she dreaded having to bend over, or sit down, or climb steps before some of the pretenders to the name of “gentleman” who frequent such establishments as her uncle’s; already she regretted the rash action of throwing her knickers on the rag heap), carrying a dingy carpet bag with the only other things she owned in the world—imagine her there, in the doorway, confronted by a girl not much older than herself, kneeling on the bed, wearing only a loosely laced grey corset of shiny, worn satin and a pair of lacy drawers like a palm’s width of cobwebs held in place by a bit of silk string, counting out silver coins between her pale golden knees. —Ginger made her money, and more besides for Mortimer, by liaising regularly with a number of men who frequently traveled the stagecoach route; all by appointment only, and no unexpected surprises, quite humane, really. She made more money by posing (and more besides, for herself) for Petula, the same famous sculptor of the Queen’s bust. And all of these clients, the woman and the men, gifted her with fine scraps of lingerie, filmy stockings, gauzy chemises, all manner of clothing never meant to be worn without the boudoir, all of which she wore as a matter of course: a lacy, silken surprise beneath her plain black servant’s dress, too short and small as Molly’s was.

Is it any wonder that Molly grew intensely jealous of the girl? When Ginger, who was (and for all I know still is) a perfectly lovely girl, learned of the state of Molly’s wardrobe, she freely offered some of her own stash for Molly to wear, and was more than understanding when Molly proved ignorant of the intricacies of some of the garments. Is it any wonder that Molly began to loathe the girl, through no fault of her own? Ginger made her feel ugly, and awkward, and intensely out of place; publicly, Molly made a show of disdaining Ginger’s offer, and pretended to be appalled at the stockings and corsets and sheer underthings, never meant to be worn under anything at all but bedclothes. Rebuffed by Molly’s protestations, Ginger withdrew her offer, and perhaps a little of her warmth, and things were, perhaps, a bit chilly between the two. —But in private, when she was alone (which was often enough, Ginger being away on her assignations), Molly would pull on a pair of stockings, or sheer, lacy drawers, would slowly, carefully, slip her threadbare black dress off her shoulders (listening all the while for a footstep in the attic hall) and down her breasts, to hold up a corset and model it in the watery metal mirror Petula had given to Ginger some months before.

—Which was how I found her, running as quietly as I could through her uncle’s inn. I’d spent a day clinging to the roof of the stage, knowing all the while that Madame Dugal’s men were not far behind (how long would it take them to discover the theft? how fast was a man on horseback? how fast a stage?), and when we pulled into the innyard, I knew I might have but minutes to get out of sight. True, they would be looking for a girl, and I had changed my dress and stockings for trousers and a shirt and vest, and chopped off my hair with a knife and tucked the rest under a cap, but I wanted to take no chances. She might have sent Nickel Rick, or Steamer Johnson, or the Dauphin, any one of whom would spot me in a minute—and, if I lost my cap at any moment, well, my hair was still white as milk. So. No chances. Good thing, too. I hurried as nonchalantly as possible through the common room, keeping to its edges, and made my way to the staircase. As I climbed it, I happened to look out in the innyard, where I saw the Dauphin sweeping