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“Stuff and nonsense,” the dowager said, taking the rosewood box. She opened the door of her room and the smell came to meet them, like a blow. The dowager fell back.

“Steady,” Isidore said. “Your Grace, why don’t I fetch your son? Footmen could carry you outside.”

“I am tired of being old,” the dowager stated. “I shall leave this room under my own two feet.”

They started down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, the hallway held a couple of men so filthy that Isidore had never seen the like. Dirt was caked on their legs and splattered on their shirts. Their faces were partially covered with red kerchiefs, but their hair and skin was caked with excrement.

The one closest to the bottom stair grinned, his teeth startling white against the kerchief covering his nose.

The dowager made a strange gulping noise, and her grip on Isidore’s arm weakened. “Your Grace!” Isidore said sharply, pulling her mother-in-law off the final stair.

The dowager opened her mouth, like a fish out of water. “This is—this is—”

“I agree, but we must continue.”

“Oh dear, oh dear, ladies as is seeing what they shouldn’t,” a cheerful voice said.

Isidore looked up and met the eyes of a third man, who had just emerged from the water closet. She knew in an instant that this particular member of the Dead Watch was an utter rogue, due to the peculiar flatness of his eyes, and the way he was smiling without smiling. “Jack Bartlebee, top of the Dead Watch,” he said to her. “And you two must be duchesses. I’ve a tenderness for the nobility. Really I do. When the king passes in his carriage of a Sunday, I always bobs me knee. Don’t I, lads?”

“That you do, Jack,” one chimed in.

“Ain’t it a shame, yer duchess, but Mr. Honeybutt went down the hillside to deal with a little problem with the pipes. We’ll have to help you.”

The closest man held out his hands, caked with brown.

The dowager made a choking sound and clutched her jewelry box.

“Tush, tush,” Bartlebee said. “You’re affronting the ladies, Wiglet. You was always too forward in your approach. Ladies like the gentle word, the sweet tongue, ain’t that right?”

“Sir,” Isidore said, “if you would move to the side, I would be grateful to take my mother-in-law into the open. She faints for lack of air.”

“I’ll help you,” Bartlebee said genially. “Of course I will. I’ll take that wee little box that the lady is holding—”

“Don’t touch it!” the dowager said, her voice a strangely airy version of her normal peremptory tone. “I can’t have you touch my—”

All three of them had their hands stretched out. Isidore took a step to the side, dragging the dowager with her. She could leave through the ballroom, rather than out the front door. The men were enjoying causing fear. Their faces were alight with some sort of strange pleasure.

“How dare you terrify an old woman!” she shouted at them, suddenly furious. “You’ve frightened her!”

Bartlebee just laughed at her, and even his eyes, those horrible flat eyes, looked amused. “It’s a valuable lesson she’s learning. Duchesses shit as well as everyone else. And once you’ve been in the shit as much as we have, you learn that the color of the stuff is the same, ain’t it, lads?”

There was a chorus of agreement.

“Let’s cut the sauce,” Bartlebee said suddenly. “We’re only halfway through these privies, duchess. You wouldn’t want us to leave the job undone, would you? Because no one else is going down into that pit. No one in England. So we’d like a little present to keep us going.”

“No,” Isidore stated. “You’ve been well paid.”

The dowager was utterly silent, staring at the men with horrified eyes.

“The young lady don’t even look frightened,” Bartlebee said, turning to his men. “That’s unusual, that is.”

“I’m not frightened,” Isidore spat. “I’m disgusted by your lack of kindness. Have you no grandmother yourself?”

“Is that a grandmother?” Bartlebee asked, interestedly. He moved closer to the dowager, who cowered away with a stifled little moan. “Oh, I see. It must be the wrinkles, am I right, Wiglet? The more wrinkled you are, the older you are? I’ve heard of that. Course, we on the Dead Watch don’t generally live to collect all that many wrinkles, so we don’t bother. We don’t have families in the regular way of things.”

They all guffawed.

“You’ll excuse me for not pitying you,” Isidore snapped. “If you have no families, it’s due to your criminal tendencies. Doubtless, no woman will have anything to do with you.”