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Prologue

Nobody’s Child

“The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.”

—Jane Austen, Emma

London, 1862

Memory is a hoarder’s closet, in which we can never find the item we want, while the things we’d rather avoid insist on tumbling out. We could be searching for the name of the person we met last Tuesday, only to be crushed by the recollection of mispronouncing hors d’oeuvres at dinner with our in-laws.

Science has discovered that a memory is more likely to stick when strong emotion is attached. Pay attention, it tells our brains. This is important. Just as a medieval scholar might draw a tiny pointing hand in the margin when he finds a passage worth remembering, we create markers for our future selves.

That was why Reina Martin would always remember the first time someone called her a bastard.

It happened on a winter day after she and her best friend, June, had gone skating in Hyde Park. On the way home, the ten-year-old girls stopped at the street corner where Mr. Budge, the chestnut man, had set up his pitch. Hand-painted signs on his wheeled cart proclaimed Warm yer mitts and Nuts for a penny.

The girls huddled next to the tin stove. As Mr. Budge lifted the domed lid to turn over smoking chestnuts with an iron scoop, a billow of sweetly scorched air warmed their faces.

“Got me a farthing,” June told Reina, who was busy searching the pockets of her wool coat. “How much you got, Queenie?”

Reina frowned at the name. “Are you making fun of me?”

June looked indignant. “Course not! It’s what your name means in Spanish, you said.”

“I’m not a queen, though.”

“You’re queen of book-reading. I’m queen of cooking. We can be queens of anything we want.”

Mr. Budge smiled. “What’ll it be, then, majesties?”

Reina pulled a penny from her pocket. “We’ll share one, please.”

Ceremoniously, he scooped chestnuts into a paper cone while they bounced on their heels in excitement.

A pair of well-dressed gentlemen waited their turn nearby, their breaths puffing white in the cold air. One of them stared intently at Reina. “I’ve seen you before,” he said. “You live at Walters Street.”

Reina nodded shyly.

The stranger smiled and stroked his whiskers before remarking to his companion, “I keep a woman there. That’s Manuela Martín’s pretty little bastard, if I’m not mistaken.”

Reina’s mind took in the new word cautiously. The abrupt, popping start of b, flowing into the hiss of a snake . . . and the tight syllable ending in d, neat as the click of a lock. It gave her a shrinking feeling. A wish to turn invisible.

The chestnut vendor’s face had changed, his forehead rucked into furrows. He bent to hand the filled paper cone to Reina. “Run on home with yer,” he said gruffly.

Reina tried to give him her penny, but he wouldn’t take it.

“Go on,” he urged.

As Reina hurried off with June, she heard the gentleman laugh in a not-nice way and call after her, “I’ll come round when you’re older.”

The girls walked back to Reina’s house in silence, cracking chestnuts along the way.

“What did it mean?” Reina finally asked.

“Dunno,” June said with a shrug. “I heard it lots o’ times in the privy yard. Ain’t a nice word.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Reina protested.