Over the Line

A Story of the Stono Rebellion

Meath, Ireland

May 26, 1739

"It’s a whole different world," Cullen told her for the tenth time.

She didn’t look at him, kept her eyes on the hearth. The night air was only beginning to take on summer’s warmth as it swarmed between the cracks in the walls and around the door. The windows were all stuffed with rags that just as easily could have been switched with the ones on Maureen’s bed.

"It’s not like the way it is here," Cullen said, "everybody stepping on everybody else’s toes. They help each other."

The house was too large to keep in decent repair, now that it was only Cullen and herself living there. When her sisters had been alive they’d managed to at least keep the night out.

"They help newcomers there, give them a hand. To help build up society, you know?"

She did. She had known Cullen too long not to realize that he was serious. They had been childhood playmates, adolescent sweethearts, and finally married youth, and she knew that when he didn’t simply inform her of a decision but tried to sweeten her into it, that he meant what he said.

"I don’t want to leave," she told him quietly, and he sighed in exasperation.

"Maury, are you listening to yourself? Three or four years is all it will take to work off the cost of the voyage, and then we’ll be able to have a little land of our own."

"We have a little land of our own. With a house on it."

And six graves. A plot as barren as rock, a house that didn’t keep the cold out, and a cemetery with only warped wooden crosses as markers.

"Virgin land," Cullen said. "I’m telling you, it’s like the Garden of Eden."

"How do you know the farming there is any easier than farming here?"

Her back had begun to hurt from sitting on the stool for so long, but the pain gave her a sullen satisfaction.

"It was in the pamphlet, all about how the soil down there is better than anything we have here. It’s fertile and furishing."

"Flourishing," she corrected.

"That, too. They’ve got almost no customs duties there, and the air is excellent."

The man with the pamphlets had come through town a month earlier, and somehow Cullen had gotten a hold of one while he was in town looking for work. Crops were poor and money was scarce; talk of the colonies always ran rampant in hard times, and this visit the pamphleteer had found the right words to convince Cullen.

"Come on," he said, reaching out from his place on the clumpy straw mattress to take her hand. She could feel where the skin on his fingers had grown soft from lack of work and wondered what it would like for him to toil again, if the exertion would rub away the melancholy that had been hanging over him for months.

"You know we’ve got no chances here," he told her. "There’s nothing left."

She pulled her hand slowly away and lay it on the table. "My family has lived on this farm for six generations."

He wouldn’t say it. Your family is dead. He sighed again and leaned back against the wall. Maureen felt his eyes on her in the dark, felt his gaze pushing and pulling at her.

"Can you at least think about it?" he asked. "It would be best for us, I know it would."

She didn’t respond, and finally he went to bed. Long after he fell asleep she rose from the table and dug a bottle of scotch out from the bottom of the creaking trunk in the corner.

The glass was cool in her hands as she jerked a torn blanket around her shoulders and stepped onto the dirt. A porch had stood above it once, but all the planks had been pulled up and used for firewood over the last two years.

Nothing left.

She opened the scotch and drank in small sips. To the north was the distant light of the O’Sullivan’s farm. Each window was tinted orange as if the glass were melting with the heat from inside.

She knew Ian O’Sullivan had offered Cullen a fair price for their land more than once, and that he had only turned it down out of respect for her. It was her family’s land, not his, and even though the deed had been rewritten in his name, they both knew it was her birthright.

Her mind began to fog with the liquor, and she found herself wandering in the opposite direction of the O’Sullivan’s, down deeper into the valley. The grass was wet and stiff against her numb feet. Long stems of spring weeds crept under her skirt to brush her knees and bits of dried dirt crumbled between her toes. The night was waiting for her with its endless blue eyes and twinkling stars, beckoning her into the dark gullies and glades.

She didn’t realize she had reached the cemetery until she walked into her father’s grave marker. Muttering a curse, she stumbled backwards and fell onto the ground. Cold scotch spilled over her fingers, dew seeped into her clothes.

She came often to the cemetery, late at night and usually bringing scotch or some other spirits. The change of the seasons took on a new meaning at night, when the animals that had lain still all winter woke up longing to make the land their own again. She found raccoons and rabbits crawling about when she lay very still, martens sinewy with hunger, squirrels with huge eyes. Sometimes she stayed long enough to see the birds frantically picking between the dried grasses for worms at dawn.

She lay on her back, staring at the sky and splashing her cheeks with drink as she tried to sip. She muttered Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s, and prayed to the saints to protect her. Sometime after the day’s warmth entirely left the earth and she found herself shivering between the crude wooden crosses, she came to the realization that it should have been her persuading Cullen to leave. Even in the two years since her sisters had died, since she’d started coming out into the night with a bottle and an ache, she had seen that the earth was nothing rising up as it should. Trees died and no others grew in their places. Wild flowers wilted before they bloomed. Cold bit deep into the skin of the land and did no release its hold until well past spring.

She could lie here and die with it, if she wanted. Or she could pack up her clothes, the skirts and socks so abundant now that her sisters were no longer around to use them, and follow Cullen to the seashore, let herself roll out into the wind and the waves where only God’s hand could steady her.

She knew Cullen wanted to get away from everything in Meath, their poverty, the forsaken land that would barely yield a potato the length of Maureen’s forefinger, those pitying stares from the shop keepers in town, who offered them credit even when they knew Cullen would never be able to pay it back. Since the time they were married, Maureen had been stitching and nursing and cooking for families other than her own, while Cullen broke his back trying to draw blood from the dead earth.

"If it is God’s will," she murmured, scotch pooling in the back of her throat. "God says to obey my husband, so if he wants to go to the colonies…I suppose I’ll go to the colonies."

She would go. She would give him one more chance to provide for her. That time she had broken her ankle and he had carried her to a doctor, the days when she was immobilized by grief and he had cared for her would not go forgotten. She would go to South Carolina.

She stumbled back to the house, this time loosing herself in the monotony of the steps and the unending climb uphill. She dashed the last of the scotch about on the ground, knowing the smell would have dissipated by morning, and tucked the empty bottle under a pile of torn baskets in the corner. Then she relinquished her weight to the rustling hay-mattress, and her careless elbow knocked Cullen awake.

"Maureen?" he asked, shifting.

"I went out to the graveyard," she told him.

"You’re drunk again."

"Just a little."

Her toes began to thaw as if held over an open flame. She squirmed against the rough sheets.

Cullen drew the blanket across her shoulders. "Maybe," he said, "when things are better, you won’t need so much scotch to make it through the night."

She stared at the ceiling, endless miles of blackness above her. "Do you think?"

"Maybe it’s being here that reminds you so much of Kathleen and Eilish. Since you were here together so long, getting away will make it hurt less."

Hurt less. "Are you taking me away for my own good, then?"

His kissed her temple. "For both our goods."

Part Two

The Chilton Plantation

Fifteen miles from Charlestown, South Carolina

July 29, 1739

Thunder rumbled in the gray hell of sky as Sharon Chilton slammed windows shut. She went rushing from one room to another, her slippered feet sliding against the wooden floor, tangled hair swinging around her shoulders. Her hands shook with nervous energy and she squealed when the night outside was lit up silver and gray, like an engraving.

"Sharon!" she heard her brother calling from downstairs.

"I know! I’m closing as many as I can!"

She’d left her candle in the bedroom, cold and unlit, and now the darkness of the bedrooms hid cases and rockers and stacks of papers to stumble over. She giggled helplessly and climbed up from the floor to throw the latch on another window, then dashed into the hall and collided with Laurence.

"There you are," he said, straightening. "Are the windows closed?"

"Yes, all of them."

His presence was more a voice than anything else in the lightless hallway. Thunder tore and she screamed again.

"Are you going faint?" Laurence asked.

She shook her head, then said, "No, I promise. I’d forgotten how big it is, all those rooms. What did Uncle Raymon use them for?"

"I haven’t any idea. Come downstairs and we’ll make some tea."

"Let me get a shawl first."

He sighed at her propriety and turned toward the stairs, calling after her, "Light a candle so that you can see where you’re going."

Sharon opened the wrong door and found herself in another cluttered room, then back out and found the little dormer that had been her nursery when she was young. The thick candle smelled of sweet beeswax when she lit it with a quivering match, and she thought of her uncle, living alone here for the last nine years without family or friend. Just his slaves and the townspeople he never failed to offend.

He had died only two weeks before, leaving everything to his brother’s three children. Sharon had lived eleven years on this plantation, until her father and parents drowned while boating. The will had left everything to Raymon, the older son, and said nothing of providing for orphaned grandchildren. They had been living in Rosebury for the last nine years, Sharon staying with Laurence while Frasier joined the Ashley River militia company. Laurence had been a clerk at the magistrate’s office, earning enough to keep them both clothed and housed, and Sharon had kept a tidy garden from which she grew vegetables.

By the time they reached Charlestown, Raymon had already been buried. They were stunned to hear that he had bequeathed them all his worldly possessions, including the house and more land than they had ever hoped to own.

Sharon danced downstairs, thrilled by the fury of the storm, just as rain began beating against the windows. "Laurence?" she called at the foot of the steps.

"In the kitchen."

Laurence was kneeling by the iron stove, running a match back and forth beneath the pile of dry leaves and twigs. Frasier sat slumped in an armchair beside the table, his shoulders wrapped in a blanket.

Sharon didn’t know if the timing of her uncle’s death had been the luckiest or the most unlucky for Frasier. He had caught yellow fever, like so many of the soldiers, and been ill for months, although the doctors said he would recover. Sharon hadn’t wanted him to travel as the way from Rosebury to Charlestown, but he had insisted, and the large sum of money Raymon had left them meant Frasier would be able to afford a comfortable recovery.

"It’s chilly in here," she admonished. "You shouldn’t be out of bed."

Frasier smiled vaguely at her. He was her elder by almost a decade, Laurence and two dead boys born in the years between them, yet their faces retained the same softness of expression. Frasier was almost as thin as she was, gaunt and dry-skinned, yet he hadn’t become depressed even after these weeks of illness.

Leaves crackled and the smell of earth filled the room. Laurence adjusted the twigs and small branches before stepping back and closing the door to the furnace. "It’ll be warm in a few minutes," he told them. He turned toward the back door and Sharon said, "No, I’ll go."

"You’re barefoot."

"It’s only the porch."

The air was disgustingly moist when she walked onto the back porch. Despite the fierce rain coming down, light was beginning to stir on the horizon, and Sharon realized that if not for the storm, it would be dawn now.

There was a barrel under the eves, just as she remembered it, and it was over-flowing in the deluge. She used an over-sized ladle to slop water into the teakettle, taking care not to wet her nightgown.

The kitchen was drafty and much cooler than the outdoors. Laurence was methodically filling his pipe with tobacco, arranging the leaves like a woman would arrange flowers in a vase. Sharon put the iron kettle atop the furnace and sat down at the table to wait with a handful of taffies she had found in the cupboard.

"It could be done," Frasier was saying.

"What could?"

He and Laurence looked at her. "The plantation. We could run it, if we tried."

All the way down to Charlestown, they had been talking about how much the land might sell for. It was good property in a good location, and there was no reason why they couldn’t fetch a fine price for it, but neither of her brothers had ever shown an interest in farming.

"What on earth for?" she asked.

"Because it’s fertile and it’s ours," Laurence said.

"But…there are only three of us," she pointed out. "What do we need with four hundred acres?"

"It will keep us well-fed," Frasier told her, "and well-clothed."

"We were already well-fed, living on Laurence’s salary and my garden. We barely had two acres then."

"It’s not that we need the land," Laurence told her. "But it’s ours, and we may as well farm it."

The idea still boggled her. "I don’t understand."

"The more land we farm, the more crop we grow, and the more money we make," he explain, as though she didn’t already know how farming worked. If we make more than we need, we’ll have money for other things, things you never even thought about. You’ll be able to have parties, wear beautiful dresses, buy books and jewelry."

"You’ll probably be married very well," Frasier added.

When she had been a child, her father and uncle had done all the farming. What crops had been grown were either sold off or eaten, and any money made went for things like iron and saddles and horses, and other things Sharon and her mother couldn’t make. They always had enough, but never had extra.

"We’d be….like the Whites then, wouldn’t we?"

"Well off, yes. We could hire a maid to clean the house, so that you wouldn’t have to. You could buy your clothes from shops, and it will give you time to do charity work, if you like."

Every article of clothing she’d ever owned had been made by either her mother’s hand or her own. But she had seen girls like Mary White and Grace Houser wearing dresses with frills Sharon would never have had the time or patience to sew on, and they were the most beautiful gowns in the world. And if Frasier was right about her marrying well, Grace had an older brother….

The decision, of course, had already been made by her brothers, and their discussion had moved on to the slaves. "There are barely enough of them to work in the fields," Laurence said. "We should invest in a few more."

Sharon got up and checked the water. Finding it boiling, she poured three mugs and seeped them with peppermint leaves.

"What about an over-seer?" Frasier asked.

"One of the negroes did it for Uncle, but I’d rather find a white man to take the job. And I don’t think they should work in the house."

"I agree."

"Why not?" Sharon asked, setting down the mugs of tea on the table.

Her brothers exchanged glances that said they’d rather not answer. "Why not?" she repeated.

"It’s just best not to have them in the house," Laurence told her. "Too many things to pick up and tuck away, and you’ll be here alone sometimes-"

Sharon laughed, interrupting him. "You think one of the negroes will try to hurt me? Don’t you remember Phoebe? She was my nurse for five years."

"Things have changed," Frasier told her calmly. "Slaves aren’t as docile as they used to be. On the other hand, Phoebe was a very good worker. I recall that father only sold her because he needed the money. If she’s owned in town, Laurence, you should try to buy her back."

"Oh, Laurence, won’t you? I’ve missed Phoebe so much."

Indeed, she had often seen more of her "mammy" than she had her mother. The idea that Phoebe might return delighted her.

"I’ll look into it," Laurence said. "Also, there’s a shipload of indentured servants coming in a week from now. I might go down and see if I can’t hire a good over-seer, and maybe a few workers for the house."

Sharon barely heard him. They were going to be rich, and live back on the plantation in the grand old house, and Phoebe would return to sing while she hung out the wash and brush Sharon’s hair every night. It was going to be wonderful.

Part Three

August 3, 1739

Charlestown, South Carolina

Phoebe had learned early in life that any ties she made would only be broken. Her father had lived on a plantation only three miles from hers, but he had been sold off when she was five years old, and she never heard from him again. Over time her brothers and sisters, five older, four younger, had been sent in one direction or another, or put on the auction block for some insult against the master. Phoebe had been sold to the Chilton’s when she was thirteen, to look after the baby, and when Sharon had grown up enough to play on her own, Phoebe was sent into the field with the other slaves. She was hired out for a year, doing laundry and house-keeping for the Springs, and when Master Chilton asked a reasonable price for her at the end of that time, they took it. Abruptly, Master Spring died, and Phoebe found herself taken by Moses Sower as payment of Spring’s debts to him, and she’d spent the last six years alternately working Master Sower’s land or being hired out.

Through all of it, she avoided becoming too close to any one. To Master Spring’s fury, she had refused to take a husband, and most of her siblings she had long since lost track of. She kept a bit aloft, separated from the other slaves, to keep herself from growing too attached to them, but eventually she’d realized that pushing them away only diminished their love for her, not her love for them.

She had a few friends on the Sower plantation who were upset to see her go, but she was comforted by the fact that the Chiltons were a short ten miles outside Charlestown and most likely, they would bump into each other from time to time in town. Still, as she looked over the faces of the slaves Laurence Chilton owned, only two of which were familiar, she could already feel herself beginning to miss the cozy group at her old home.

What anger she allowed herself to feel was directed at her new master. What right did he to say when she must leave and where she must go? No one had ever dragged him away from his family, his home, leaving him powerless to change things.

There wasn’t much of his father in Laurence, she reflected bitterly, as she tugged the burlap sack containing her few possessions down from the horse-cart. His eyes were clearer but less friendly, and his thin hands moved too quickly.

The plantation itself looked much the same. To the left of the drive was the long, boxy house, its white-wash peeling back in the sun. To the right and straight ahead were the fields. They looked as long and deep as the ocean with the last of the sunset reflecting off of them. Nestled in the deep of the fields was the long, low shed where the slaves slept, and Phoebe could tell by the slant of the walls that no one had repaired it since she was last here.

"Mammy!" called a voice from the house, and Phoebe looked up to see a woman gathering her skirts as she ran across the front lawn.

"Sharon?" Phoebe asked, genuinely startled.

Laurence sighed as Sharon, almost as tall as Phoebe herself was, leapt into the woman’s arms. "Good Lord," Phoebe said, "look at how tall you’ve grown!"

Sharon laughed, sending her hair flopping around her shoulders. "I’m so glad you’re here," she cried.

"So am I, baby, somebody’s got to braid that hair of yours properly."

She laughed again, and sounded just as young as she had lo those many years ago. "You said the curl would fall out when I got older, but it never did."

"Might even have gotten worse, I think."

Laurence intercepted. "There’ll be time to talk later," he said. "Come on, now, we’ll get you settled."

She nodded and started walking toward the house. She wondered if she might even get her old room back, that little dormer next to Sharon’s.

"Phoebe," Laurence said, and she paused to look back at him. He pointed to the shed in the field. "Slave quarters are out there."

They started at each other. Laurence challenged her to defy him, Phoebe worked to hide the sting of the insult from her face.

"But-" Sharon said.

"Phoebe’s not a house slave any more," Laurence told her sharply. "She can stay in the shed, with the others."

Phoebe slowly lowered her gaze and began walking in the opposite direction from the house. Laurence, she realized, and this time fully, was not his father. Times had changed, and slaves would no longer be treated as comrades in this house.

Not as long as there were more slaves than Chiltons.

Part Four

Charlestown Port

August 3, 1739

"What do you mean, we’re to be sold off?" Cullen demanded, unconsciously grabbing hold of Maureen as the dock swayed and she threatened to loose her balance.

"You haven’t go any papers, and you haven’t go the money to pay your passage," the little man in the dirty green breeches told them again.

"We had an agreement with the captain," Cullen snapped. "He would bring us over, and we would be indentured for two years. Now you want to claim-"

"I’m not claiming anything," the man cried, hiking up his pants. "It’s the custom of the country. You come over without papers, you work five years."

"Cullen," Maureen groaned, "I’m going to be ill."

She fell to her knees on the dock, stomach heaving, and vomited into the green-gray waters below them. Around her, seamen stomped across the precariously nailed planks, waves splashed against the posts sunk into their depths, and sails hissed as they were drawn up against the wind.

"Fresh fish!" a merchant called from the shore.

The voyage had been a nightmare from the beginning. She and Cullen had traveled to Britain and boarded a ship harbored on the Thame River. Captain Cumming had spoken with them, and agreed that they should be indentured for two years in return for their passage, after which time they would be free. The deal had made Maureen nervous, no documents had been signed – "Of course I trust your word, Captain." – and only mugs of beer to celebrate had passed between Cumming and Cullen. The entire thing had taken less than a quarter of an hour, then they were being hustled below deck in the cramped, dark rooms that stank of salt and vinegar.

A week passed before the George actually set to sail, during which time the captain vanished and the foreman refused to feed any of them. After two days of being hungry, Maureen went ashore and did some washing for an elderly family in return for a week’s food.

When the voyage finally began, conditions grew steadily worse. The trip through the English Channel was rocky and everyone grew seasick. The rooms were so packed with people that they couldn’t even all lay down at the same time, and the stench of spilled bodily fluids was so rank Maureen could sometimes hardly breathe. The only relief came from a hollow tube poking out of the corner of the ceiling, through which air was pumped when the sailors had time. Still, it was hardly sufficient to rid the room of the damp reek of urine.

They had spent seven miserable weeks at sea, as the air grew steadily warmer and the water more blue. Nightmares spread among passengers like plague, wringing their sleep dry of all rest. Maureen had reached Charlestown Port and discovered that their horrors were only beginning.

"Look, if you don’t have any papers, then you don’t have any job," the man in the green pants said. "You have no choice but to get back on the boat." He glanced in distaste at Maureen. "And stop your wife from spewing all over the dock."

She grimaced, almost grinning. She had finally been allowed off the boat and her innards couldn’t take the shock.

Cullen pulled her up to her feet as if he were unconscious of her. He hissed curse words and grabbed Maureen to haul her back along the docking plank. "Captain!" he called. "Captain, this man here doesn’t believe me about our agreement!"

Cumming appeared on deck. His clothes were fresh and sparkling white. Maureen wondered what she must look like in comparison, after a week spent waking and sleeping in the same dress.

"Oh?" he asked innocently. "What agreement would that be?"

The only consolation was that they hadn’t been the only ones duped. More than twenty other passengers complained of similar agreements, and heard only, "If it isn’t on paper, it isn’t legal," as response.

"Will they send us back?" Maureen asked, standing once again on the shifting deck of the George.

She could never recall having seen Cullen so red. "No. We’ll be sold off."

"Sold?!" She snapped her face to see him. "As slaves?"

"For five years service. Five goddamned years, instead of the two Cumming promised us."

A few hours after the lunch they were never served, the ship’s lieutenant ordered anyone without proper papers to line up on the deck. Cullen’s face lost all color then, as the lieutenant walked up and down the line and rapped out orders like, "Tidy your hair!" "Straighten your shirt!" and "Look sharp now!"

Within moments, a crowd began filing onto the boat. Almost all were men, many of them with young boys at their sides. Their eyes ran up and down each passenger’s body in a manner Maureen thought violently rude, and not once did they bother meeting her gaze.

"What’s your name?" one man asked, seeming to peer into her hair.

"Maureen O’Shay," she answered.

He frowned contemptuously and moved on to the next passenger.

"It was your accent," Cullen told her. "He knew you were Irish. And Catholic to boot. Tuck your cross under your shirt."

She did so without protest, but it didn’t sit well with her. She’d dealt with more than her fair share of Protestants in Meath.

The sale went on for hours, and as time passed the sun and thick, gross air began to wear on those passengers not sold. She barely noticed the brazen appraisals the buyers made with their conforming facial expressions, and she stopped worrying about her posture and leaned against the side of the boat instead. Her clothes were damp with sweat, and she was hungry. She didn’t care about a successful sale any more, or trying to pick a respectful buyer out of all these callous towns people. One man actually crouched down so that he could pinch her calf, at which point she shouted and kicked him.

Cullen told her that she wasn’t being helpful.

Past the supper hour, a man finally stopped in front of them. At Cullen’s prodding, Maureen rocked off the ship’s rail and onto her aching feet.

The man was about Cullen’s age, maybe a few years older, very serious. He was pale, as if he rarely worked outside, and Maureen indulged a faint hope that he was a shop-keeper.

"Can you keep a house?" he asked her. For the first time in hours, she found a customer meeting her eyes.

"That I can."

"And be maid to a lady?"

The question was degrading, but she could feel Cullen’s eyes on her. Swallowing her pride, she said, "That, too."

"She’s a fine one," the lieutenant put in, quickly coming up next to them. "Most people moan and groan the whole crossing, but she just gritted her teeth and prayed."

"She’s Irish?" the man asked.

"Yes, and her husband, too. Also a very good man." He leaned toward the man. "Best to buy the couples, if you get my meaning. They’re less likely to go fooling about."

The man considered, then said to Cullen, "I need an over-seer for the slaves. Have you done such a thing before?"

Cullen obviously hated answering honestly. "No," he admitted, and the man nodded and began walking past.

"But he’s a quick study," the lieutenant jumped in. "You don’t find a pair like this often, and when you do, they’re usually priced only for Midas."

The man paused. He hadn’t smiled once since he came on-board. "How much do you want for them?" he asked finally.

"Twenty-five dollars a piece."

Now his mouth twisted in a sarcastic half-smile. "Do you have anything else to show me?"

"Would you take the pair for fifty?"

"I’m not an idiot."

The lieutenant coughed and blushed. "No, of course not, sir. Mine was the miscalculation."

"I won’t pay more than forty for them."

He worried a moment, then shrugged. "Oh, fine, forty it is. But I promise you, you’re being given a fine deal today, a very fine deal. Just let me go and get the forms."

Maureen sighed and let her head drop onto Cullen’s shoulder. She had only been here a day, and she already hated South Carolina.

Part Five

August 3, 1739

Chilton Plantation

Sharon lifted the cloth and rang it out over the bowl of water, which a lump of ice sat in the middle of. Her fingers were growing wrinkled and they had started to cramp with all the squeezing.

She smoothed the cloth flat and lay it on Frasier’s forehead. The windows were open, but the bedroom was still heavy with moisture. "You’ll feel better when it’s rained," she told him.

He was laying limply on the bed wearing only a thin night dress. Beads of sweat rolled into the hollow of his throat. He nodded weakly.

The fever had hit him that morning, rendering him lifeless. Laurence had gone ahead to the docks, leaving Sharon to take care of him. She’d asked a hundred times if he didn’t want her to call for a doctor, but he said not. "It will ease off in a few hours," he kept telling her.

She didn’t know how it was possible for his fever to break when the very air boiled. The rain had been threatening for days now, the sky blinking rapidly as clouds gathered and dispersed. Every evening thunder rumbled as the sun set and then faded into the night, but morning showed nothing more than dew on the ground.

There was an ice block in the cellar. If it didn’t rain tonight, she might drag him down there.

From outside came the clatter of the cart. "Is that Laurence?" Frasier asked sleepily.

Sharon stood up and walked past the four-poster bed to the window. Through the wavy glass, she could see her brother climbing down from the carriage.

"Yes. There’s a man and woman with him. The woman looks young." She felt herself smile. "About my age."

"You should go and greet them. You’re the lady of the house now."

She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Are you sure you’ll-"

He waved a wimp hand at her. "Go on, I’ll call if I need you."

She hesitated, then wetted the cloth and lay it over his forehead again. "I won’t spend long," she promised.

"Take your time."

The girl wasn’t more than a year older than Sharon, if that. She wore a plain, threadbare dress made of brown linen, and her red hair was covered with a kerchief that might once have been white. The man was holding her up by the waist as she sagged.

"Laurence," Sharon said. "You did well."

She was not at all certain of that. This couple looked like something the cat might drag in.

"These are the O’Shays," Laurence told her. "Cullen’s going to be my over-seer, and Maureen will keep the house. My sister, Sharon."

"It’s a pleasure to meet you," Sharon told them.

Neither of them replied, probably, Sharon reflected, out of exhaustion. "Come into the house," she said quickly. "Let me get you something to drink."

"I’m going to check on the negroes," Laurence said, and Cullen added, "I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind. I may as well get to know them as soon as possible."

Laurence nodded, and the two men started into the fields. Maureen breathed deeply, then coughed. Her face was as white as the moon.

"Well, come in then," Sharon told her, and led the way toward the kitchen door. "You’re from Ireland?"

"Yes."

Laurence couldn’t abide the Irish. He must have gotten a wonderful deal on them.

Sharon gestured to the table and Maureen fell into a chair gratefully. "Did you have a rough crossing?"

"They tell me it was a very good crossing, but it didn’t seem so."

Her accent made every word curl delightfully. Sharon poured a mug full of clear water and set it on the table.

Maureen drank thirstily, then set her mug down and sighed. "I never expected to see one family own so much land," she said.

"You didn’t farm in Ireland?"

"We did, but nothing grew. Your family must be large."

"Just myself and my brothers."

Maureen’s green eyes widened. "What do you do with all of it?"

"Laurence says we’ll sell what crops we don’t need."

Sharon watched the other woman shake her head, still amazed. "It will be nice to have you around," she said. "I’ve been living away for so long that I don’t think I have any friends left here."

Maureen’s face was more lined than Sharon had first noticed. "Did you leave family back home?"

"No. I only have Cullen, and I brought him along."

The conversation lagged for a few minutes. "Would you like to see the house?" Sharon asked finally.

"If I’m to be cleaning it, I’ll need to know where things are."

Sharon walked her slowly in and out of the first floor rooms, spending time especially on the pantry and the kitchen. Maureen seemed to want to linger a while in the cellar, which was the coolest part of the house, and Sharon indulged her. It was nice down in the shade, with the chunks of ice sending off drifts of cold air. When they emerged, the sun had set and Laurence was calling her from the living room.

"You can take the night to settle in and rest," Laurence said, seeing Maureen. "You and Cullen will stay in the old slave cabin out back, until he has time to build something sturdier."

"They aren’t to sleep in the house?" Sharon asked.

Laurence ignored her, saying only, "You’ve had a good start today, Cullen. I’ll wake you at dawn."

"I’ll be ready," the Irishman told him and, taking Maureen by the wrist, led her toward the kitchen door.

"Why are they sleeping in the slave cabin?" Sharon asked again, when they were gone and her brother’s look of dark annoyance had returned to her.

"They’re servants, Sharon."

"Phoebe always slept in the house."

"That’s because she had to look after you at all hours of the night."

"But you were rude to them besides."

"I was to the point. Maureen isn’t a girl who can come visit and entertain you for a few weeks, she’s got work to do."

She sat down on the davenport with the lion’s feet, hands knotted together. Tension drew her tongue tight against the roof of her mouth. "You are making me look poorly, Laurence."

"And you are making me look weak."

"They have spent two months on a boat coming here, and you ask them to sleep in a filthy, broken-down cabin that not even the slaves will use, knowing all the while that we have a dozen empty rooms in this house where they could just as easily and more comfortably stay. They will think me a poor hostess."

"They will think you an obedient lady," Laurence snapped. "Which at this moment, you might strive harder to be."

"What is going on?" Frasier asked, appearing at the foot of the stairs. He had pulled a robe over his night-clothes, and the high spots of color had left his face.

"Laurence is being a bastard," Sharon told him, and both of her brothers looked at her in shock.

"Do you want me to slap you?" Laurence demanded.

"I would rather you slap me than humiliate me in front of our guests as you did earlier."

"They aren’t guests, they’re servants-"

"Fine!" She realized she was shouting and sat abruptly back on the davenport, wrapping her arms around her torso. "Fine." Her skin was on fire.

"You’re going to faint," Laurence told her matter-of-factly. She glared at him and tried to breathe more slowly, but it only increased the ache in her chest. The room began to tilt to the left. She shut her eyes.

"I think," Frasier said from a distance away, "we’re had enough discussion of this for today. Why don’t Laurence and I leave so that you can lay down?"

She nodded, fingers already fumbling at the back of her dress. Her brothers made a hasty retreat as she jerked open the chords of her corset. Thread whistled against cloth as it loosened, and she slumped onto her side, panting with relief. Her skin was damp, and curls of hair stuck to her face. At least with Maureen around, servant or not, she would have somebody to help untie her stays.

Part Six

August 17, 1739

The night was an old friend to Phoebe. No matter how long the day, night would come like the stroke of God’s hand upon the land and wipe away all sight, force sleep on even the wariest of masters. Her steps were always hers in the dark.

Laurence Chilton either didn’t realize his slaves went out at night, or knew and looked the other way. As long as everyone was back by five a.m., when he and the Irishman would rouse them into the fields, he didn’t say anything. That was fine with Phoebe. Sometimes the only thing that stopped her tongue from lashing was knowing that tonight she would be as she pleased.

Ah, these interludes of freedom. They brought out the wildest joy and the deepest sorrow in her. Was she grateful for the moments or resentful of the hours around them?

The light of another long, low shed twinkled between the trees. Phoebe quickened her step when she could hear the music pouring from the ends of clay flutes and the mouths of slaves. Someone beat slowly on a hollowed-out tree-trunk wrapped with the thin flesh on an animal, accompanied by the uneven clacking of a child smacking stones together.

The door was propped open with a broken brick, so Phoebe stepped inside without knocking. Piles of hay and dried leaves had been pushed to the ends of the shed to make room for those dancing around a great fire. The ceiling vent had been opened, but it did little good, and the hazy smoke made those dancing look like spirits.

"Phoebe!"

She turned and found Rosemarie coming out from the group. She was older than Phoebe, rounded in the middle from birthing six children, and one of her temples had been burned to a warped knot when she was young, but she smiled then and reached out to hug her friend.

"Am I took late?"

"Not hardly. They’re about to jump. Come on."

She allowed Rosemarie to draw her through the throng of people surrounding the fire. Hands and voices reached out to her from all sides, those calling her name in greeting, those wanting news about her sale, those tipsy with drink and happy to see anyone and everyone.

Sammy and Nan were dancing on opposite sides of the bonfire, kept away from each other by the amused pushes and pulls of their friends. Sammy had on a new shirt, and Nan had filled her hair with flowers. They were both laughing, and it was Nan’s little girl banging the stones out of time with the music.

"Broom! Broom!" someone began to chant, and soon the whole shed had taken it up. Phoebe smiled as she watched the rough-hewn tangle of hay and twine wrapped around a long pole appear from behind someone’s back and tossed onto the ground.

Old Carver was ancient, but he stood up straight and spoke through a full mouth of teeth. His black eyes were bright with fire as he hushed the room to silence and held up a tattered, floppy-paged Bible.

"It’s time for the wedding!" he announced. "You two young ones come forward."

Sammy and Nan disentangled themselves from their friends and stepped before Old Carver and his broom. Nan’s face was shining with sweat and smiles.

"We are all together tonight!" Carver said. "All Nan’s family and friends, and all Sammy’s family and friends."

Phoebe heard the door open as Carver stopped, and a youthful voice called out, "‘Cept those of us who couldn’t be here ‘cause they got sold down south."

She turned her head to see Jemmy propping the door open again with the brick that had rolled out of place. He was ten years younger than her, wearing only over-sized pants that had to be knotted around the waist and a long string of polished white stones at his neck.

A few people chuckled. Someone groaned.

"But we’ll be thinking about them," Carver added, before Jemmy could go on. "They’ll be with us in God."

He began moving more quickly, keeping the pace beyond interruption. He flipped the Bible open in the middle and held it out. Sammy put his hand on one page, Nan on another. "Do you promise to be good to each other?" Carver asked. "To take care of each other and your children, and to always follow God?"

They both nodded.

"Then jump," Carver said, and grabbing onto each other, they leapt over the broom on the floor.

A cheer rose up from the crowd, and Phoebe allowed herself a full smile. Someone had scavenged up six birds to roast – she knew better than to ask where they had come from – and soon the shed was thick with the juicy scent of fresh meat. Soon there was dancing again, and another log thrown upon the fire in a burst of sparks.

The party lasted well into the night. Some of the older children went into the woods for their minutes of privacy, those that had traveled far to be here began the long journey back with their bellies full. Phoebe caught Nan long enough to give her the pair of spoons she’d carved, then sat down at the circle’s edge to watch the dancing. The slaves moved like torrents of flame, shifting and turning without pause, rising and falling with the music. Rosemarie and her sister, Annie, started a song and others fell in with them.

O tender and sweet was the Master’s voice

Phoebe found Old Carver coming to sit beside her. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, patting her knee. "Weddings are good things," he said. "They make everything look bright for a little while."

She nodded.

"When am I going to get you and your man to jump the broom? Eh?"

She shook her head. "Not for a long time, Carver."

"Psh. You are alone too much. You need to start a family." When she didn’t respond, he said, "How are you getting on with your new master?"

"Well enough. He’s training an over-seer from Ireland. We get a little time to ourselves, and enough to eat."

"That’s good. Are there any nice men on the plantation?"

There was one, but she didn’t want to say it. "No."

"Well, your luck will change." He patted her knee again, but she saw his face darken. She followed his line of sight to a group huddled in the corner. Between the heads, she could see Jemmy’s face. His cheeks and eyebrows moved quickly as he spoke, his hands opening and closing, pointing in dramatic gesture.

"He’s too young to be stirring up so much trouble," Carver said. "It’s not fair to the rest of us."

When Phoebe looked at him questioningly, he explained, "We’ve seen what happens when slaves rise up. We know the cost. Jemmy has no idea what he is trying to start. He’ll get us all killed."

Phoebe nodded absently. She wondered if Jemmy didn’t have every right to be stirring, since the trouble was already there, and the thought that he might achieve something raised both dread and desire inside her. If they broke free, the world would be hers. If not, they’d all end up burned alive.

She was straining to hear him over the singing and the calls of encouragement coming from those gathered around him when Carver said, "Come with me." He tugged her to her feet. "There’s a man from Atlanta who just came here, I will introduce you to him."

She allowed Carver to draw her up, but her eyes lingered on Jemmy and the people nodding their heads to his words. Carver followed her eyes and shook his head. "You don’t want to get in with them, Phoebe."

"Why not?" Her words weren’t as innocent as they sounded.

"When has rebellion ever brought us anything? It just gets us killed, and makes the whites more suspicious."

"But what if it worked?"

His expression was old, knowing. "If it hasn’t worked by now, it ain’t going to. Rebellion isn’t going to change anything."

She shrugged indifferently, not sure of her own position. She had escaped countless lashings by lowering her face instead of lifting her fist; had just as many opportunities for freedom passed her by?

Part Seven

The Houser Plantation

August 25, 1739

Sharon watched Miles Houser easily lift a huge porcelain pitcher and fill her glass with lemonade. "Thank you," she said as she accepted it.

He smiled at her. "Sweets for the sweet."

The day was hotter than usual, and even sitting in the formidable shade of a leafy oak tree, every breeze felt heavenly. On the endless lawn, which was beginning to crisp and turn brown with autumn, children in ruffled clothing tossed balls back and forth, the sweat on their faces shining.

Grace was sitting between Miles and Sharon, her black curls immaculate even with the heat and wind. She sat on her knees, leaning on one hand, looking as cool and comfortable as a swan on the water. Such was the way with all the Housers, Sharon had found. They carried an internal freshness, the women lithe even beneath their corsets, the men limber on the porch and strong in the fields.

Grace finished telling them about an amusing mix-up with the postmaster, and Sharon laughed delightedly.

"How are you settling back into life in Charlestown?" Miles asked.

"Has everything changed?" Grace suggested with a smile.

Sharon self-consciously twisted the lace at the wrist of her dress. Everything had changed, hadn’t it? "It hardly feels like the same town," she admitted.

"Oh? In what way?"

"So many more people. Maybe it’s just that the house is so empty, not at all the way it was when I was younger." Her eyes caught on motion near the barn, and the lemonade in her mouth turned sour. Wen she spoke, her words were buried in a chorus of barks. "And there’s that."

Miles and Grace turned to look as three men on steeds, their guns silhouetted against sky, came riding around the side of the barn. Between the horses’ thundering hooves ran the nigger-dogs. They were stocky, meaty animals with compacted muzzles and hungry eyes. Sharon felt her hands clench together just seeing them.

She knew what those dogs would do if they found a run-away. If the slave didn’t run up a tree first, each hound would open its wide jaws like a bear trap and sink each dagger-tipped tooth into flesh. The slave would thrash and scream while one dog and then another clamped onto his ankles, his thighs, the soft flesh of his belly. Blood would spray as if a chicken had been gutted carelessly, and the slave would shriek for mercy while the dogs buried their faces his guts.

"Jemmy!" Miles called, and the negro who had been walking across the lawn stopped. "What’s going on?"

Jemmy had a primitive look in his eyes, not entirely unlike those of the dogs. "Jill and Cate took off while they were supposed to be in the north field."

The sound that came out of Miles’s throat was harsh. "Insolent wretches," he muttered, and rose. "Jemmy, saddle my horse. I’ll join the hunt."

Sharon saw Jemmy stare at his master for a moment. His face was almost unreadable, but under his expression, she thought she saw a flicker of defiance.

"What are you waiting for?" Miles asked.

Jemmy shook his head and ran toward the barn. "Like children," Miles groused. "You have to tell them every goddamned thing twice-"

"Miles!" Grace said.

He glanced back at the two women on the blanket. "I apologize," he added quickly, "I forgot my manners. If you’ll excuse me..."

"Of course," Sharon told him.

"And good luck," Grace added.

They watched him walk away, and then Grace sighed. "Slaves are most impossible," she commented.

Sharon nodded idly, thinking about Jill and Cate. If the dogs found them before the riders did...

"However," Grace said, bringing her gaze back to Sharon, "husbands are much easier to control, and you, I think, are in the process of making an excellent catch."

And Sharon found herself smiling again.

Part Eight

The Chilton Plantation

August 25, 1739

"Get up," Cullen said again.

Maureen opened her eyes and looked up at him blearily. "What?"

"I told you that you could sleep for an hour after noon, and it’s been three already."

The air in the miserable shack was so heavy it pressed her onto the blanket. She’d tried to keep the sunlight out by hanging a rag over the window, but within minutes the air was too thick to breathe. "I can’t get up," she said.

He held out his hand; she ignored it. "Maureen," he said. "They’ll be expecting supper in an hour."

She closed her eyes again. "How can anyone eat in this weather?"

"It’s easier if you don’t just lay down and wait to die like a lamed deer," Cullen told her.

"It’s easier if I’m breaking my back in the field? Or cleaning chimneys in the house? Or dragging crates of laundry across the lawn?"

He sighed. "We did come here to work," he said.

"I never worked this hard in Meath."

"You never lived as well, either."

She glared at him, and sat slowly up. Her entire body was slick with sweat. Hair stuck to her neck as if tarred there.

"I don’t see how sleeping on a pile of hay in South Carolina is so very different from sleeping on a pile of hay in Ireland," she told him, but he was already walking out the door.

"Get to work," he called over his shoulder.

"Cullen!"

He glanced back at her and said, "Don’t push me, Maureen."

She’d never heard him speak to her so sharply with, with such command. "I’m not one of your negroes, Cullen O’Shay!" she shouted, scrambling to her feet at the doorway.

He didn’t respond, only waded into the field.

Fuming, she made the long trek from the cabin to the house.

Cullen had grown steadily more distant in the two weeks since they’d arrived. His initial fury at their sentence of five years servitude had turned into a warped pride at his position. He seemed to enjoy doing Laurence’s bidding like a frightened child, and then lording that same power over the slaves.

The house offered some small coolness, and the lace curtains allowed shade without the stifling heat. Maureen exhaled slowly, listening all around. Sharon was out, Laurence was in the field, and Frasier, most likely, was languishing upstairs, half unconscious. She felt badly for Frasier in his illness – it reminded her so much of her sisters’ – but the fear of suddenly stumbling onto death again kept her from going upstairs to check on him.

Instead, she opened the little cupboard in the dining room with the key Laurence didn’t know she had seen him put away, and retrieved a small bottle of peach currant. Holding the green glass against her chest like a baby, she skittered back through the kitchen and down the narrow passageway to the cellar.

All, cold. It was dim, but not so dark that she couldn’t pick her way around the various bags of stores to the big chunk of ice in the corner. She went as far laying her head against the glassy surface for a moment before opening the currant and taking a long sip. Weak, weak stuff. Nothing like the spirits from back home, but still far better than the frail juices handed out.

She shuddered happily as the cold sank into her skin and she sank down on the floor beside the ice. What bliss. When she was sitting in the cellar with a drank and a chill, Cullen’s enjoyment at being in the tangled fields seemed all the more absurd.

She’d been there perhaps half an hour when she heard footsteps above. Her eyes flickered open just in time to watch the light from the stairwell dim and then peter out. The door at the top of the stairs closed with a click.

"Oh, dear lord," she whispered.

Her hand fumbled about on the floor until she found the stopper for the currant, and her confused fingers managed to wedge it back into the bottle. Then she stood up and stumbled between bags of preserves and hanging hocks of meat to the stairs, banging her shins with every step.

She emerged into the kitchen with the bottle tucked precariously into the waistband of her skirt. Frasier was standing at the table, struggling to open a jar of jam. Next to him were several slices of bread.

"Oh," he said, looking up. "I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were down there."

She nodded in acceptance, noting the improvement in his color and, apparently, his appetite. "Can I get that for you?"

"I suppose."

His limbs obviously weren’t entirely healed from his illness, the lid popped off so easily in Maureen’s hand that she was thrown back a step. Unfortunately, the bottle of peach currant tucked in her waistband slid loose, and crashed to the floor.

Now she was in for it.

She froze, then closed her eyes. She heard Frasier take a few steps in her direction and his clothing rustle as he leaned down to retrieve the bottle.

Her eyes flickered open as she heard the door open, and Sharon swept in with a radiant smile. "Hello, Maureen," she said quickly, but then her gaze caught on her brother, holding a bottle of liquor. "Oh, Frasier, you’re drinking. It will help your constitution, I’m so pleased."

He glanced at Maureen, then nodded vaguely. Only a few steps behind his sister, Laurence entered the kitchen with Cullen at his heels. He didn’t even register Maureen’s presence. "Sharon," he said, "you’re home just in time for dinner." He noticed the kitchen table. "Which seems to consist of bread and jam."

He looked ready to throttle Maureen, but Sharon broke in, "Just like the old days." She was obviously delighted. "Don’t you remember how we used to make a snack of bread and jam in the afternoons, Laurence, when we were children? Mother would give it to us while we waited for dinner to be ready. Come on, let’s take it out on the porch the way we used to. Frasier?"

"I’ll be along in a moment," he said.

When Maureen was alone in the kitchen with Cullen and Frasier, she took a few quick steps toward the door before her husband caught her arm. "I know, I know," she told them hurriedly, "I’ve been a horrible house-keeper and I was in the cellar drinking when I should have been fixing dinner and you have every right to put me back on a boat to Ireland."

"Oh, christ," Cullen muttered.

"Cullen! Watch you mouth!"

"Watch your hands," he snapped. "They haven’t moved but up and down with a bottle in the last year."

"And yours haven’t moved but up and down with a whip since we arrived here."

"Excuse me," Frasier interrupted, and they both stopped short. His voice was calm, a bit dry. "I’m sure this is nothing to get so upset about. It takes at least a year to season newcomers to the climate, Maureen just needs a bit more time."

"Needs a good thrashing is more like," Cullen mumbled, but he didn’t press it when Frasier said to go easier on her.

When he had gone out to the porch to join his siblings, Maureen wasted no time in throwing twigs into the fireplace and holding a match to them. Cullen watched her in seething silence.

She pitched more twigs onto the meager flame until it caught a small branch, and then hastily filled a black cauldron with watcher. She settled it on its three stubby, ash-covered legs between the logs and then found a knife to cut vegetables with.

She hacked uneven chunks out of a potato which was twice the size of anything she’d seen in Ireland the past year.

"Are you pleased with yourself, then?" Cullen finally asked.

She looked at him dourly.

"You’re skipping your work, drinking and sleeping the day away, and you’ve got the master of the house wrapped tight enough around your finger that you won’t be punished for any of it."

"Are you accusing me of something, Cullen?"

"I’m telling you what I see."

"Can I tell you what I see, then?" Without waiting for a reply, se went on, "I see you running after Laurence like a lost puppy hoping for scraps, convincing yourself that you’re more important than any one of those blacks in the field when the truth is that you’re just another pair of hands to be bought or sold-"

He slapped her so hard she stumbled back from the table, dazed. "I’ve had enough of your lip," he hissed. He turned on his heel and vanished from the room.

Maureen stood next to the table for several long minutes, listening to the fire crackle and the water begin to bubble as it heated, all the white very aware that she was holding a large knife in her right hand.

Part Nine

August 27, 1739

Phoebe woke to the feel of a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes opened and saw only the cracks of moonlight coming through between the planks of the walls.

"Phoebe," the figure crouching beside her whispered.

"I’m awake. What is it?"

"They caught Cate and Jill today. They’re fixing to hang Jill Sunday morning."

"Oh, lord."

She sat up and scrambled off the bundles of hay so carefully arranged in the dirt. Rosemarie was already holding out her shoes. "It’s worse. Quashee is saying he’s going to poison Master Houser, and Jemmy’s with him. They’ve got one of the house girls agreed to put it in his tea tomorrow morning, and by noon every slave will have run for the north."

They scurried past other sleeping forms and out to the field. "I’ve got Matthew’s pony," Rosemarie whispered. "I didn’t know who else to go to, there must be a dozen others at the Housers’ getting ready to ransack the house and go on the run."

Phoebe waited until they were out of earshot of the house, then spurred the pony until its hooves slammed the dirt. When they reached the path that led to the slaves’ shed on the Houser plantation, she jumped off. "Go get Old Carver," she said. "Tell him I asked him to come."

Rosemarie nodded and sent the pony dashing in the other direction.

Phoebe found the fires still burning bright, even these hours after midnight. Jemmy was standing on a crate at one end of the shed, waving his arms as he spoke, and the slave gathered around him hollered their agreement.

Walking toward them, she found Abby tending to the fresh whip marks on Cate’s back and legs. She touched Abby’s shoulder in passing and went on to the group huddled at the far end of the shed.

"Phoebe!" Jemmy cried when he saw her. "Welcome! Are you here to take back your freedom with the rest of us?"

A few people stepped out of the way, creating a path for her to approach Jemmy on. She stopped at the beginning of it, and her eyes found a familiar face in the crowd. "What do you think you’re doing, Quashee? This isn’t even your plantation."

Quashee’s eyes were red-rimmed. "I’m fighting back," he told her in his low baritone. "Master Houser thinks he can hang my wife and beat my daughter, and I can’t do a thing about it?"

"No!" shouted Jemmy. "This morning is our morning! We will not stand by while one of our own is hung because she wanted what God gave all of us!"

"You’re going to get killed," Phoebe told them.

"I was born a slave," Jemmy said to her, "but I won’t die one."

"Neither will I!" someone else called, and was quickly repeated.

"There are more slaves in Charlestown than there are white folk. If we each kill just one of them, our entire race will be free! Together, we will go to the Spanish and claim out place as free people!"

"You talk like killing men is the same as killing piglets," Phoebe said. "But most of you won’t be able to do it. You’ll back down at the last minute, and the whites will hang you as punishment."

"The whites will beg us to be lenient with them!"

The calling escalated to shouting, but Phoebe held her arms up. "Have you all forgotten Paul? Three years ago, he burned his master’s house to the ground, killing all inside, even the master’s little baby son. And what good did it do when they tied Paul to the stake and set him on fire? Don’t you think that he wished that he hadn’t lifted a finger to light that match when the flames burned off his skin?"

The noise of the crowd had dropped to a murmur, and Phoebe stepped deeper into their midst. "You are angry, Quashee, and you have every right to be. But if you kill one white person, the next moment there will be another to take his place. You cannot act rashly."

Finally, she reached the crate where Jemmy stood. Next to it was a table, with an earthen bowl. The bottom of the bowl held a tablespoon of whitish dust. "Is this your poison?" she asked.

"It’s dog-button."

Phoebe leaned down, careful not to inhale any of the stuff. With the tip of one fingernail, she stirred the contents, then shook her head and straightened. "That is not strychnine," she said firmly.

A chorus of complaints rang out, and Jemmy jumped down from the crate. "How do you know?" he demanded.

"Strychnine looks like little stars, not like rice powder. This," she dunked a finger in and then very carefully licked a tiny bit, "is baking soda."

Immediately, everyone started hollering at Phillip, who insisted that he had been told he was buying dog-button. "Won’t kill him," Phoebe remarked, "but it might give him a good tummy-ache."

With the homicidal plans falling through, she turned and walked slowly to the door, where she met with Rosemarie and Old Carver. "They’ve mostly given up," she told Carver.

"Thank Heaven for that."

He gave her a hug and went into the shed. "Do you need a ride home?" Rosemarie asked.

"No, I don’t mind the walk."

She needed the walk. Her mind was a murky tumble and the night air might help clear it. She tugged her arms close around her chest and wiped the sweat off her forehead as she stepped back onto the path.

Just when she had reached beyond the circle of light cast by the shed fires, a voice came out of the darkness.

"Phoebe?"

She jumped, then gritted her teeth and forced her eyes to peer between the trees. "What?"

Jemmy appeared a few feet ahead of her on the trail. God only knew how he moved so quickly.

She knew the expression of harnessed anger on his face. "What did you think you were doing back there?"

She tried to shove past him and he grabbed her arm. "Stopping you from making a mistake."

"Do you want to sit around and take orders from white people your whole life?"

"No," she whispered fiercely. "But I don’t want to die for their stupid laws, either. I’ve already lost a brother to a rebellion-"

"We’ve all lost brothers."

"-that didn’t bring us anything. I won’t risk another."

"I’m not suggesting a weak uprising. I’m saying that if we all join together, we can take this country."

"By dumping baking soda in peoples’ tea?"

"The baking soda was an accident. But if we use fire-"

"I don’t want to kill people, Jemmy. I don’t want to stoop to their level."

"The law saying all the white men have to carry guns on Sunday goes into effect in just a few weeks. Sunday’s our best day, the one day we get to ourselves, and they want to walk among us with guns. We’re running out of time."

His grip shifted from a tight hold on her arm to a cradle around her waist. "Don’t you trust me, Fe?"

She stared over his shoulder into the woods. The urge to say, "Yes, let’s kill them all," had never been so strong, but she resisted, thinking of her brother’s body shredded by bullets. She didn’t hate the Chiltons enough to do that to them.

"I have to go," she whispered.

Jemmy lay his forehead on hers. For a moment she thought he would speak, then he simply released her and stepped away. As she watched him melt into the forest, she heard him say, "Your choice, Fe."

Part Ten

September 8, 1739

"Where are you going?" Laurence demanded, as Sharon finished drying her hands and tossed down the dish towel.

"Town, we need a dozen different things, and it’s market day."

He stepped all the way into the kitchen. "In that dress?"

Sharon glanced down. "What’s wrong with my dress?"

She started when he reached out to grasp a clump of fabric in one hand. "It’s dirty."

"Hardly."

"What have you been doing in it?"

"I was out weeding the flower patch this morning."

"It shows."

Laurence dropped the hem of the dress. "Change before you leave," he told her.

"What on earth for?"

"I don’t want the folks at market thinking Frasier and I can’t keep you well-dressed." He started to leave and then paused. "You weren’t wearing a hat either, were you?"

Sharon clapped her hands to her cheeks.

"You’re covered in freckles. Didn’t you used to own a parasol?"

"Not since we left Charlestown."

Laurence sighed as if this was one more in an endless string of exasperations she had caused him. He vanished into his bedroom and returned with a fistful of dollars, which he carefully secured in her purse. "But a parasol," he told her. "And at least two hats that will keep the sun off your face. And," he eyed her hands, "a pair of gloves without holes in them."

Sharon accepted the purse and immediately opened it. "Laurence, how much have you put in here?" she demanded.

"Do you need more?"

"This alone is a month’s worth of shopping money!"

"Then it ought to be enough."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Shop. It’s not so hard, Sharon, just buy what you like. Most girls would be thrilled by the chance, not confused."

She shrugged. Where was the penny-pinching brother she’d had a month ago? He seemed lost under the new shirts and pressed pants.

"I’ll change and be down in a few minutes," she told him. "Would you mind fixing up the cart?"

"I’ll have Cullen do it. In fact, he should go with you to town."

"Why? I do know how to add and subtract money."

"Yes," Laurence agreed, turning away. He began walking toward the stairs. "But the slaves have been restless since those two negroes the Housers own ran off, and word came in today that England may soon be at war with Spain. I’m sure most of the slaves are fancying that by the end of the year South Carolina will belong to Spain and they’ll all be free. Better not to court disaster."

Better to have a man, was what he meant. Sharon closed her bedroom door and fused with her dress a moment before reaching for the bell chord in the chord. Laurence had installed it only a week before, and while Sharon had been hesitant the first time she tugged it, she now considered it invaluable.

Maureen appeared a few moments later, heavily flushed. She was carrying a bottle of tonic water and a small bucket of ice chunks, and Sharon immediately felt guilty for having forgotten that Maureen was looking after her brother.

"How’s Frasier?" she asked quickly.

"His fever is up, but he’s in a good humor," Maureen told her. "Is that all you wanted to know?"

"No, I need to change my dress."

Maureen glanced Sharon up and down, seemed to find nothing wrong with the dress, shrugged and went to the wardrobe. "Which one do you fancy?"

"I think the yellow."

In minutes, Maureen had the "dirtied" dress over her head and the yellow one in place. As she evened the stayed of Sharon’s corset so that it made a straighter V, there was a knock on the door.

"One moment, please. Maureen, can you hurry?"

Maureen tied a quick knot, expertly ran up and series of buttons, and made a lovely bow out of the ribbon at the dress’s waist. "There you go," she said.

"Come in!"

Cullen opened the door, and Maureen grabbed her ice and tonic water and swept past him without so much as a glance. He ignored her equally.

"Are you two still not getting on?" Sharon asked.

His mouth twisted. "The cart is ready."

Still fighting, then. She wished there was something she could do to help reconcile them, but nothing came to mind. Well, maybe she could at least find Maureen a little trinket in town, something to cheer her up.

Part Eleven

Frasier was still breathing hard after dinner. Maureen had fixed a simple rice pudding and baked potato for Laurence, who had accepted the meal without compliment or complaint, and Cullen and Sharon were still in town. Frasier had no appetite.

Maureen refixed the curtains again and sat down in the chair beside the bed. "Is there anything I can get you?" she asked, praying that he might think of something that would require a trip down into the cellar.

"No. Thank you."

His eyes drifted open, then shut. "How long have you and Cullen been married?" he asked.

It was the first question anyone had asked about her personal life since the day she arrived. She felt that she was opening a great vault in answering. "Three years this Christmas."

"No children?"

"No, no children." She reached out with a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his face. "Why is it you never married?"

"I did. My wife and our child died last year of smallpox."

"I’m very sorry." She hesitated. "I had two sisters two died about the same time."

"Then you know how it is."

She nodded.

"I thought it would be worse," he added.

Not wanting him to continue speaking, she pressed his lips apart and slid a small piece of ice between them.

They both knew he was going to die. The disease had come on and off again, sometimes leaving only the yellow tint to his skin and pretending to flee the rest of his body, but they both knew that this time Death would not release its hold. Frasier was too worn down to fight any longer.

It was a shame. He had been the only one of the Chiltons who had been truly kind to Maureen. Sharon was too wrapped up in being a young woman, and Laurence was too interested in the farm and his own position as master of it to care about anyone else.

"Would you do something for me?" Frasier asked.

"Of course."

"In the wooden box on the dresser, there’s a locket with a miniature inside it. Would you bring it to me, please?"

A lock of hair was caught in the clasp, too fine to be a woman’s. Maureen settled it in Frasier’s hand just as she heard Sharon’s voice from downstairs calling for her.

She hesitated again. "You’d better go," Frasier said.

"All right." She squeezed his hand, and closed the door quietly as she left.

"Maureen!" Sharon called again. She hurried down the stairs, lifting a finger to her lips.

"Your brother is resting," she said, and Sharon winced guiltily. Then she was smiling again, and pressing a piece of paper into Maureen’s hand. "Look what I’ve bought!"

Cullen, who had come inside with Sharon, was about to leave when Laurence held up a hand for him to wait.

Maureen unfolded the page. She was unable to make out many of the words, only "Lord," and "Saint."

"What is it?" she asked.

"I’ve rented you a pew at Saint Phillip’s!" Sharon exclaimed.

"You’ve done what?" Laurence demanded.

"I know how religious you and Cullen are," Sharon went on, "and I imagine you’ve been rather lonely since you came here, so I thought that if you could go to church on Sunday and be with the other Catholics, you might cheer up."

"Sharon!" Laurence said. His voice was like a slap.

She looked at him in surprise. "What?"

All the eyes in the room were on him. He huffed up a bit. "You should have spoken to me before you did this."

"I did. I asked what I was supposed to do with all the money you gave me, and you said, ‘Shop,’ and ‘Buy what you like.’"

"I did not intend for you to be outfitting the servants like this."

Sharon still appeared confused. "I don’t understand why you’re angry, all I’ve done is encourage our servants to be Christian-"

"Which Laurence could use a bit of himself," Maureen finished.

"Watch your tongue, wench."

Her turned his lecherous look on her again, and she felt the anger and resentment she had been pushing down since his first coldness to her on the dock rush forward like water spilled on a table. "Watch your soul, heathen," she told him.

The lacy white parasol Sharon was holding fell right out of her hands.

"You drunken little bitch," Laurence seethed. His dark eyebrows touched at the center of his forehead. "I’ll teach you not to speak to me like that."

She felt only triumph until he grabbed her by the hair and tried to rip a clump out. For the first time she became aware of how much larger he was, and how furious, and she clamored after him, trying to stay on her feet.

"Cullen!" she howled. "Cullen!"

Laurence hauled her out the back door, across the porch, and into the carriage barn. Her feet lost purchase on the sliding hay and for a brief instant the weight on her entire body hung on her scalp, driving pain like razor slashes across her temples.

"Cullen! Are you listening to me?"

She didn’t remember there being a whipping block in the carriage barn before, and from the clean edges of the wood she suspected it was newly made. Like a big square tree trunk, one side was slanted harshly so that when Laurence threw her against it she was unable to rest her weight on it properly but, with her hands chained on either side of the block, unable to straighten up, either.

"Cullen, oh, christ, he’s going to whip me!"

She kicked furiously while he secured her hands. The iron cuffs weighted more than her arms did, and hanging on them made her shoulders dig into the corners of the block. Each time she secured her footing, she could loose it after a few seconds, sending another horrible jerk down to her wrists.

"Shut up," Laurence told her. She felt his fingers in her waistband-

"Take your hands off me you filthy, godless bastard!"

-and he lifted up her shirt, then flipped the back over her head. Her neck was arched back and she was for all-purposes blinded, unable to make out anything but the rough cotton against her eyes. She struggled against the fabric and the restraints but only succeeded in banging herself repeatedly against the block.

She screamed while Laurence beat her with a strip of leather. Ten lashings, and one more after she called him arrogant and heartless. Each time the leather snapped against her skin and dug its edges into her flesh like the biting of a row of insects. Maureen shrieked her throat rough and sore, and banged her head against the boards of the whipping block until she was too dizzy to find her voice.

Part Twelve

Phoebe was sitting against the shed when Old Carver appeared out of the woods. Even on his bad leg, he was moving fast, and she stood up to meet him.

"How did you know I was coming?" he asked.

"I didn’t. Master Chilton beat a servant today, the slaves are all nervous. It’s the first time since he took over the plantation."

"Then you don’t know about Jemmy?"

"Jemmy?" Her throat went dry. "What’s he doing?"

"I don’t know, he won’t talk to me. But it’s clear enough that he’s going to do something. They’re at the Kidden Plantation now, but there’s talk of going out to Saint Paul’s."

She climbed to her feet. "Who’s with him?"

"Who isn’t? You’ve got to talk him out of it, Phoebe."

"What makes you think I’ll do any better than you did?"

Carver shook his head. "He says I’m too old to see clearly. He says I’m feeble, scared. Maybe so, but he knows you’re strong, and he knows you’re clever. Chances are better that he’ll listen to you." His frown deepened. "He was talking about the news from England today, that there may be war with Spain. I think he might make a run for Saint Augustine and the Spanish border."

At Carver’s bidding, she hurried ahead of him. It was only a few hours after dusk, there was still a lot of night ahead, and she knew as well as anyone the kind of cover darkness could provide. Her stomach knotted, and twice she had to stop herself from breaking into a run.

The slave cabin at Kidden was deserted; she found Jemmy and six others sitting along the bank of the Stono River with candles and knives. They were all men, Kidden didn’t allow women on his plantation, and Phoebe felt out of place in addition to her fear.

"What’s going on?" she asked.

Jemmy was drawing in the dirt. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. "Go home, Phoebe."

She dropped to her knees beside him. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing you’ll like."

"This is my fight as much as yours. I have a right to know what you’re doing."

"Did the old man send you?"

Jemmy ran his fingers over the dust, obliterating the picture. He shook his head in disgust. "You can either walk away, or one of these boys can carry you back to the Chiltons and knock on the front door. I’m sure they’ll be glad to know where you’ve been."

He face was cold, unmovable, and she knew that she had insulted him the other night, taken his pride in front of others. If someone could talk him out of this, it wouldn’t be her.

"Fine," she said, and rose.

She didn’t look back as she walked to the path, and no one followed her. No one saw her slip between the bushes, her steps covered by the thrum of the river. No one felt her watching.

Part Thirteen

The Chilton Plantation

Five minutes past midnight

August 9, 1739

Sharon wouldn’t look at either of her brothers. "You didn’t have to do it," she kept saying, sitting in the bedroom’s padded armchair with her face in her hands. "You didn’t have to!"

Frasier pressed a handkerchief against her cheek and she knocked it away. "Hush, hush," he said.

"I did have to," Laurence repeated. "Really, I did. You saw how she behaved, it was inexcusable."

He was pacing the length of Frasier’s big bed, more upset by his sister’s hysteria than the housemaid’s insubordination. "Really, Sharon, I barely hit her."

"Her back was bleeding!" Sharon told him, almost screaming.

"Calm down," Frasier urged, and Laurence looked at him.

"You shouldn’t be out of bed," he said, "regardless of how childishly Sharon is acting."

"Childish?! How can what you did be reminiscent of my childhood when Papa never raised a hand to one of the slaves?"

"Things were different!" Laurence snapped. "Frasier, please, your cheeks are bright as berries."

That tugged Sharon out of her crying and raging enough that she really looked at her brother for the first time she’d burst into the room.

His eyelids were dropping and his skin was tainted. He was wearing his bedclothes; Sharon had forgotten that he had been sleeping.

"You have a fever," she said. "Laurence is right, you need to lay down."

He made a dismissive gesture and shook his head. "I’m fine, just spent too much time in the sun yesterday. You’re the one who should lay down."

He ran a hand lightly over her head, still crouching next to the chair.

"No, no," she muttered, making an effort to dry her face. "It’s only that I’ve finally recognized Laurence’s cruel heart."

"Sherry," Laurence moaned.

"Tell me what happened," Frasier said calmly.

She broke into fresh tears while recounting the short chain of events that led up to Maureen’s lashing. "It was brutal," she finished, "and hardly deserved. It’s not as though she was stealing from us."

"She drinks constantly, she never finishes her work, she can’t cook, and she called me a heathen," Laurence countered. "It was warranted."

"I agree that some punishment should have been delivered," Sharon told him, "and I know Maureen is drunk a lot, but she’s very unhappy here, and the heat is very hard for her to take, and....When we had slaves before Papa died, they were never beaten, and certainly never the servants."

"Things have changed," Laurence said mournfully.

"What sorts of things?"

"You wouldn’t understand."

"Why not?" she demanded, indignant.

"Because you’re a...You spend your time embroidering and praying and having tea with other ladies. You don’t understand how it is between slaves and men, how things have changed."

She didn’t believe him. "Then tell me."

"Sharon." He paced again, challenged and irritated at the same time. "There are so many slaves now adays," he said finally, after a considerable amount of thought. "Almost more slaves than there are white folk, and they don’t have our upbringings, so they don’t know how to behave. They see themselves as being forced to farm for us for no good reason. Maybe if they were smart they would realize that when we’re helped, we’re able to help all the colony, but they aren’t. They resent us."

"So rather than explaining it to them," Sharon clarified, "you’ll beat them into submission."

He appeared surprised that she understood. "If they rose up against us," he said, "we could all be killed. I had to be firm with Maureen, let her know that I’m in charge. To send a message to all the slaves, to protect us."

She saw his argument, but although she didn’t agree with his conclusion, she couldn’t see another possibility. That day in town, standing still for a brief moment, she realized that for each pale, pinkish face she saw, there were two or three black ones, and their force swarmed around her like bees.

She was as angry with herself as she was with Laurence. She should have asked his permission before renting the pew. She should have taken the blame when he became angry. And she should have defended Maureen.

Laurence was about to begin speaking again when Frasier swayed. Sharon felt his arm slide off her shoulders as he slumped sideways to the floor.

She and Laurence were at his side in a moment. Sharon lay her palm against his forehead and found it slick with sweat.

"He’s fainted," she said, "and he has a terrible fever."

"Let me get him back into bed."

Sharon found a dry handkerchief and began drying her brother’s face. Any thoughts of Maureen, guilt, or anger, were pushed from her mind.

"Quickly," she said. "Go boil some water and bring up my box of tea leaves."

As he left, she added, "And send one of the slaves for the doctor."

Part Fourteen

The old slave cabin

3 a.m.

"I want to go home," Maureen repeated.

She was laying on her stomach, utterly limp, on the floor. Her back still felt as if it was on fire, and she’d refused to put a shirt on no matter what Cullen said.

He wasn’t saying much then. Maureen supposed he had fallen asleep until she heard his voice.

"Would you please shut the hell up and go to sleep?"

He sounded on the verge of suicide. Maureen felt similarly.

"I’d like to," she told him in the dark. "But my husband didn’t bother defending me while I was being beaten today, and funny enough, there’s a horrible pain in my back-"

"Maureen."

She turned her head toward his. "Yes, Cullen?"

"That’s enough."

He wouldn’t even argue with her. She rolled her head onto the other shoulder and clamped down on the tremors inside. Had she ever been this alone? Even when her sisters died, Cullen had been there, even when she was laying in the belly of the wretched George thinking she would die if they didn’t land soon.

"Maureen," he said again. She didn’t reply. "Are you crying?"

She knew his hand had hovered over her back before coming to rest on her hair. "Come now, it’s all right. In a week you won’t even be able to feel them."

She buried her face in the crook of her arm. "You didn’t even try to stop him."

His exhale was a wince. "He’s the master here, I couldn’t-"

"I don’t think I know you any more," she whispered flatly. "I think this land has done something to you."

"You know that’s not true. You’ve been getting smart with him since the day we arrived, he had to put you in your place sooner or later."

"But you didn’t even try to stop him," she said again.

Cullen was silent for a few long minutes. Maureen felt the tears dry on her face, and then he said with less anger, "Do you wish we hadn’t come here?"

"Of course I do. It’s filthy hot and we work for godless people and you were never so cold to me before."

His fingers straightened the strands of her hair. He was probably unaware of how tender her scalp still was.

"I’m just trying to do the job I came here to do."

"I thought you came here so that you could provide for me."

"I did."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Then why didn’t you stop him?"

The shack filled with silence that neither one of them broke.

Suddenly, there came a banging on the door, and it flew open. Laurence’s face was illuminated by the candle he thrust in front of himself. "Maureen," he said gruffly, "get in the house. Sharon needs you."

"Now?" she asked. She was wildly aware that although she was laying on her stomach, she still didn’t have a shirt on.

"Now, and I’ll take no lip about it. Get moving."

The door slammed and Cullen sat up. "Don’t bother," Maureen told him, and reached for her clothes.

Part Fifteen

Saint Paul’s Parish

4:30 a.m.

Small arms and gun powder were on sale.

Phoebe couldn’t read beyond recognizing her own name, but she remembered hearing Laurence tell Cullen two days before that small arms and gun powder were on sale at Hutchenson’s store. As she watched the two dozen slaves carrying torches cross the Stono Bridge, she had no doubt that’s where they were headed.

She made out a few of them by their figures, their steps. There was Cuffie and Matillah from Redbrook Plantation, Assey from the White’s, and Jehu and Into from the Yorman’s farm. And Jemmy, of course, in the lead.

A slave Phoebe didn’t recognize kicked the store door off its hinges, and she knew definitively that this time there was no going back. Too much noise had already been made for the white folks not to have noticed.

Sure enough, a moment later the shop’s proprietors, Mr. Gibbs and his apprentice, Robert Bathurst, came running around the side of the building. Both of them were wearing white nightdresses that waved as they ran. Mr. Gibbs shouted something Phoebe couldn’t hear and grabbed hold of Jehu’s arm.

Jehu twisted, and suddenly Mr. Gibbs doubled over. He clutched wildly at his stomach before toppling over and sagging to the ground.

Phoebe felt all the air leave her lungs. She fell to her knees as surely as if she had been the one stabbed.

Robert saw what was happening and made as if to run, but two black men caught him easily, and this time it was their fists they used. Robert screamed as they beat him brutally, finally finding a nearby rock to silence him with.

Jehu was hunched over Mr. Gibbs when Jemmy and the others finally came out of the store, his shoulders rocking rhythmically. At the sight of Jemmy, he triumphantly thrust his arm into the air, and Mr. Gibb’s head came with it.

The crowd let out a shout. "Do the same with him!" Jemmy called, gesturing to Robert.

When they left, most of them armed, the two heads were sitting on the doorstep.

Phoebe sat between the trees rocking back and forth until the bile in her throat went down. Then she walked on unsteady legs to the front of the store.

Robert was almost unrecognizable, having been beaten with a rock before his head was cut off. But Mr. Gibbs looked as bitter and cruel dead as he had alive. His mouth was pulled back in a wretched scowl of distaste, but the color was quickly leaving it and draining down the steps.

Phoebe felt a perverse sense of joy rise up in her. How many times had local farmers brought their slaves to Mr. Gibbs and given him a dollar to whip them? How many professional brandings had he done with a hot-iron for half the cost?

She swallowed the urge to take the head and fling it into Stono River. Instead, she turned away and began following the light of Jemmy’s torches. She wanted to stop him, she wanted to thank him, she wanted to run and she wanted to join him.

She didn’t realize what was happening until they set Mr. Godfrey’s house on fire. She had thought that Jemmy had killed Mr. Gibbs and Robert because they had gotten in the way of raiding the store, but now she saw slaves running across the lawn with vases and bags full of silver and live chickens in their hands. Someone opened the gate to the horse pen, and the animals panicked, smelling the fire. Mr. Godfrey was hauled onto the front porch and his head blown off by three blacks with shotguns. All the while his son and daughter looked on, screaming.

"To St. Augustine!" Jemmy shouted, and was met with responses of, "Liberty!"

They’re going to burn their way to Spanish territory, Phoebe realized.

Passing through the heart of Charlestown as they went.

Some of the rebels grabbed horses and turned southward toward the main road to Georgia. Over their ragged clothes were thrown the bright frocks of the Godfrey family, colorful silken scarves and elegant hats. Mr. Godfrey’s son was put to a quick death; his daughter was dragged back into the house. A few minutes later, as the mob began to move off, taking with it Godfrey’s own slaves, a gunshot came from within the house.

When they had passed, and the house was collapsing into a mess of flames and smoke, Phoebe steadied a horse that had dashed into the woods. She used a tree to pull herself astride and then directed it away from the main road, through the forest. With any luck, she would reach the Chiltons before Jemmy did.

She just wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there.

Part Sixteen

The Chilton Plantation

10:30 a.m. September 9, 1739

Maureen threw the stinking onions into the pot of water, letting the steam wash the sting from her eyes. Muttering curses and trying not to stretch the fabric of her shirt over her back, she filled another bucket with water and set it among the coals to boil.

Frasier was growing weaker by the house, and Sharon more desperate. The slave sent to fetch the doctor had not returned; when tea didn’t work, Sharon decided to try an onion bath. Maureen coughed and gasped and spit, and cut more onions.

From outside came the unexpected whiney of a horse. Maureen peered out the window, startled. She was hardly expecting company. Maybe the doctor had finally arrived-

It was one of the slaves who leapt off the mount and onto the back porch. Phoebe, Maureen recognized as the door swung open, and such an expression of fright she had never seen.

"Listen," she said, her eyes moving frantically around the room, "you have to listen to me."

She clasped Maureen’s onion-soaked hands between her own ice-cold palms.

"I’m listening," Maureen said. Phoebe was bordering on the hysterical.

"You have to get Master Laurence and Master Frasier and Sharon, and you have to hide them in the woods. Do you hear me?"

"Frasier is sick," Maureen tried to tell her.

"It doesn’t matter. There’s a rebellion, the slaves are rising up, and when they find them, they’ll kill them and burn the house. They were already heading for Pon Pons Road when I left."

"A rebellion?"

"Yes, and they’ll kill you if they find you. They’ll kill your husband, because he’s the over-seer. You have to go now, go and get them into the woods where no one can find them. Hurry, hurry."

Then Phoebe was pulling away. "Wait," Maureen called, running to the back door. "Where are you going?"

With the sun rising behind her, Phoebe was little more than a silhouette as she lifted her hands and shook her head. "I’ve got to go, don’t you see? They’re....they’re my people. I have to help them."

She’s going to join the rebellion, Maureen realized, but before she could think of a response, Phoebe was back on her horse, flying across the lawn.

A rebellion. Dear Lord, they would all be killed if she didn’t move quickly. Burning the house. Killing Cullen.

As she turned to dash up the stairs, she tumbled against Sharon, who was coming down them. The pot of cold onion water she was holding spilled all over both of them. It filled the air with a noxious stink and slickened the steps.

"You stupid fool!" Sharon screamed. Her eyes were even puffier than Maureen’s, and it was obvious that she had passed over the edge of hysteria hours before.

"Can’t you do anything right? Are you trying to kill Frasier? Aren’t you thinking inside your stupid, fat, Irish, Catholic head? Get out of my way!"

Maureen stepped aside, into the shadows. When Sharon had gone back upstairs, she turned toward the back porch.

She hadn’t said a word.

Part Seventeen

Pon Pons Road

11 a.m.

Sometime before the sunlight rubbed the night’s chill off her skin, Phoebe found herself sitting on Jemmy’s house, wearing a dress of fine lavender silk, and licking the honey off her fingers. She had found two jars inside Mr. Nash’s house and run outside with them just before Jehu broke a bottle of wine over Nash’s head and tossed a live match on him. Now Nash’s slaves marched on either side of Jemmy’s mount through the morning sunshine.

Their numbers had grown to over eighty by then, as they sacked and burned one plantation and then another. Two drums appeared and a chant was raised, "Where are we going? Saint Augustine! Why are we going? Liberty!"

With each step, Phoebe felt more empowered. The night’s freedom had finally lived through the dawn; she rode by her own choice. She left the killing to those with a taste for it, Jehu and Willem, but when her hand lifted a candle to the curtains in Mr. Sacheverell’s sitting room, she did it with all the reverence of a nun light alter candles. No furious frenzy had driven her to this moment, this glorious morning. She had crossed all lines knowingly.

"In another few hours," Jemmy whispered in her ear, "we’ll be unstoppable."

She nodded. The horse rocked under her like a swaying boat.

"No protests this time, Fe?"

She shook her head, wordlessly turned to place a lingering kiss on his mouth. She didn’t know how to tell her what this sight meant to her, seeing her people walk down the road not as a prodded heard but an army. She couldn’t find the right way to apologize for doubting their strength.

"Jemmy!" Quaco called. "There’s someone ahead!"

Phoebe covered her ear so Jemmy wouldn’t deafen her when he shouted back. "What color?"

"White as the sand! What do you want to do?"

"Are you trying to be funny, Jack?"

Quaco laughed and, gesturing to two others on horses, took off down the road. Half an hour later, they were back, annoyed at having lost track of the white men.

"Plenty more where they came from," Jehu consoled them.

A voice caught Phoebe’s attention.

"Stop it! You’re being stupid. We’re going to get away!"

A man she didn’t recognize was yelling at the younger woman beside him.

"Warren, I don’t want to get away if it means I’m going to hell when I die. Warren, I don’t want to kill people. Please, Warren, I don’t care what they’ve gone, I want Jesus to take my soul when I die. Warren, listen to me-"

Jemmy had followed her line of sight. "She’s afraid," Phoebe told him.

"Nobody forced her to come here."

"’Cept that man."

"I didn’t force you to join us."

"I know."

She was so caught up watching the reluctant woman that she almost didn’t notice where they were. Her hands clenched in the horse’s mane.

"Jemmy, wait."

His eyes didn’t meet hers. "No turning back now."

"Jemmy, please, they’re good people."

"Susan told me they practically beat that Irish girl to death."

"It was barely a dozen lashings! Jemmy, stop. We can leave this one, like we did the innkeeper at Wallace’s Tavern."

"I’m not inclined to leave anyone who thinks he owns others. Sure as hell not the man who claims he owns you."

She had to throw her arms around him or fall to the ground as he kicked the horse into a canter. Please Lord, she thought, let Maureen have gotten them out. Let silly Sharon be miles away by now. Don’t let them be in the house when we reach it.

Part Eighteen

High Noon

"Do you hear something?" Laurence whispered.

The air in the bedroom was stopped as if in a bottle. Sharon sat on the side of the bed, shaking, holding ice to Frasier’s face with both hands. Laurence had long since collapsed into the armchair by the window.

"Daisy?" Frasier asked.

"She’s in the next room," Sharon lied. Her brother turned his head from side to side, sending bits of ice flying across the sheets. "Lay still now."

"Dear God it’s hot," he said.

The windows were all open, but the calm outside was penetrating. Not a leaf stirred. Sharon wiped one hand on the crumpled bodice of her dress and then used it to fan Frasier’s face.

"I think I hear something," Laurence said. His blondish hair had turned dark with sweat and was clinging to his temples.

"I can’t recall ever being so hot," Frasier went on.

"I know, I know."

She felt as if her heart had been beating twice as fast as usual since the night before. Her chest hurt, each breath brought soreness. Where on earth was Susan with the doctor?

"It’s drumming," Laurence said. "Who is outside drumming on a Sunday?"

"It just the slaves enjoying their day off," Sharon told him distractedly. Why couldn’t he come and help her for a moment? Frasier wasn’t the only one who was hot.

"I should tell Cullen to keep them quiet. People will complain."

Frasier’s eyes opened, bloodshot and unfocused. "A good over-seer has to keep his watch on the slaves at all times, because as soon as he looks down to one end of the work line, the slaves at the opposite end will only work half as hard."

"Frasier, be quiet."

"A good over-seer knows when a slave is sick and when he is faking, and he knows how to stave off the negro-consumption."

"I’ve never heard them so loud," Laurence marveled.

"Frasier, I am begging you. Be still and rest now."

"A good over-seer does not pick favorites from among his slaves, and he works not to make enemies of them."

Laurence stood up and looked out the window. "Sharon," he said, in an entirely different voice. "Those aren’t our slaves."

She looked up from nursing her brother. "Who are they?"

"I only recognize a few, from the Colonial’s plantation. Stay here, I’m going to go and speak with them."

"Are you sure that’s wise?"

"With this heat, it may be fire. I’ll be back when I can."

She watched him leave, her gut suddenly clenching. There was singing coming from the slaves outside, she could almost make out the words, and she doubted they sang while spreading news of fire.

"A good over-seer," Frasier continued softly, "never tusses with the slaves. That’s why Laurence picked out Cullen, he already had a wife to tuss with, so he wouldn’t be tussing with the slaves."

A scream blew through the dead air.

Sharon jerked to her feet, leaving her handkerchief on Frasier’s fevered chest. For a moment she didn’t do anything but breathe shallowly and clutch at the cross around her neck, then came another scream and she fell upon the window, recognizing her brother’s voice.

Black people covered the lawn like spilled beans. Some rode horses, many were dressed in outlandish costumes. Men and women alike carried rifles and knives with long, arched blades. They beat drums and shouted, and above their heads they waved smoking torches.

She was only able to find Laurence by the swarm of people standing above him, lifting their fists and feet, then slamming them down. Drops of blood flung off the knife blades shimmered in the sunlight, then rained to the ground. One by one, the slaves wandered away, coming toward the house and trailing gore across the lawn.

Laurence’s body was a flattened heap on the ground. His white shirt was filthy. He lay in a red sea, and he had stopped screaming.

The tightness in Sharon’s chest increased tenfold. She tripped over the hem of her skirt and banged her knees against the corner post of the bed, then her cheek. Her fingers fumbled between the folds of her dress until she found the tight network of stays constricting her lungs, and for precious once, the chord snapped and released her all in a rush.

Laying with her head against the floorboards, she heard the back door open.

Part Nineteen

"Put that down, Maureen."

She didn’t listen. "We have to go, and we have to go now."

"What are you talking about?"

She shoved her clothes into the burlap sack, her sisters’ dresses, a wheel of cheese.

"Did you steal that cheese from the house?" Cullen demanded.

"Get your things, and get ready to go."

"I’ve told you already, we aren’t running away. We came here honestly, and we’ll work as the custom of the country say-"

"Cullen!"

She spun around to see him, knowing that her eyes were blazing. He was leaning against the door with his arms folded. His face did not hold much in the way of respect.

She was about to speak when there came a distance screaming. "Oh, sweet Jesus," she breathed.

Cullen leapt up and threw the front door open, only Maureen latching onto his arm and refusing to let go stopped him.

"We have to leave," she told him again. "The blacks are revolting, Cullen, we have to get out."

His gaze jumped from her to the main house. "The Chiltons..."

"Are already dead. Listen to the screaming."

"That’s Laurence. We have to help him."

He dragged her down the path, running, shaking her. She dug her nails deep into his arm but he wouldn’t listen to her pleading. More screams from the front lawn as Cullen kicked the back door open and rushed into the kitchen.

"Please, please, christ, Cullen, please, let’s go..."

"Frasier? Sharon?"

There was a scuffling sound from above, then a heavy thump. Maureen followed Cullen as he thundered up the stairs. "Why won’t you listen to me? They’re going to kill us."

He burst into Frasier’s bedroom to find the man on the floor. Sharon screamed and fell to her knees, banging her elbow against the open wardrobe door.

"They’re going to kill all of us!" Maureen shouted. "We have to run now!"

"The closet," Sharon begged. "We can hide him in the closet."

"Yes," Cullen said, as if Maureen hadn’t even spoken. He reached down and lifted Frasier’s chest, then dragged him to the wardrobe. Sharon pushed against her brother’s legs as Cullen hefted his body. They tucked his arms in and threw the doors closed just as a dark face appeared in the doorway.

"Jemmy, stop!" Phoebe ran in after the wiry, muscular young man who stepped without fear into the bedroom. "Don’t do this!"

He lifted his shotgun and took quick aim. Sharon didn’t have time to scream again before he had blown off her head.

Sharp bits of scull sliced at Maureen’s cheeks. Her weight buckled and she slid down the wall, unable to look away from the sight of Jemmy discarding his shotgun for the pistol tucked in his belt. He turned in her direction; she felt fire on her face as he lined up his sights.

"No, that’s the girl!" some one cried. It was a woman standing in the doorway, older and covered in dirt, blood, and ash. "She’s the servant they whipped yesterday!"

"For God’s sake, don’t hurt her," Phoebe moaned.

Jemmy considered, then tilted his pistol toward Cullen.

"My husband," Maureen croaked.

"And Frasier is dead of fever," Phoebe added. "Please, Jemmy, no more."

He didn’t hide his reluctance as he left.

"Why didn’t you tell them?" Phoebe demanded. Cullen’s eyes flashed.

"You knew this was coming?" he shouted.

"I tried to tell you, tried to make you leave-"

His fist connected with her cheek so hard that when her head snapped back the board behind it cracked. Blood soaked the front of her face, the room faded in and out. She heard hinges squeak and Frasier said, "You’re a good over-seer, Cullen." Cloth and weight were dragged across the floorboards.

Then Phoebe was throwing cold water in her face. "They’re burning the house," she said. "Come on."

Maureen didn’t question as the slave helped her up and led her outside, into the midst of the rebels.

Part Twenty

4 p.m.

Jemmy called a stop as the day began to fade. "Don’t you want to cross the river?" Jehu asked.

He shook his head. "We’ll stay here tonight, keep going in the morning when more colored people know we’re moving."

Phoebe found Maureen laying on her back in the tall grass. She sat down and held out a bottle of red wine she had rescued from the last house they burned.

Maureen lifted her arm from her face. Her laughed roughly and said, "I don’t think I can drink. Today of all days."

Phoebe pressed her lips to the smooth green rim and poured the liquid down her throat. She was wickedly thirsty.

"Somebody here is going to kill me," Maureen said. Her hair was tangled in the grass, her face was still crusted with blood, and her nose had swollen to disfiguring proportions. "You all know I’m not really one of you." Phoebe didn’t respond and she added, "I wish they hadn’t shot Sharon."

A fire was built in the center of the field, and Assey appeared with a huge dead boar. "Eat quickly," Jemmy said, "and then go to the surrounding plantations and gather more people."

The people all around were joyous. They were filthy and gaudily dressed, but they sang at the top of their lungs. They wiped the grease from the roast pork on their fancy, stolen clothes and talked of the future.

It took a few minutes from people to realize that Nan’s little girl wasn’t screaming with happiness but out of fear. The call was raised within seconds.

"Whites!"

They surrounded the western side of the field, and they had probably twice as many people. "Get up," Phoebe said, pushing Maureen’s shoulder.

All around them, guns were being loaded, knives pulled out from belts. Phoebe stumbled to her feet and dragged Maureen after her. Instinctively, the mob moved closer together, like a pack of wolves.

"What do you want to do?" she heard Quaco asked.

Jemmy was somewhere behind her, more toward the outskirts of the cluster. His reply was grim. "Are you trying to be funny, Jack?"

Phoebe threw herself to the ground as they fired almost simultaneously. Susan screamed, the spit still holding a bulk of pork was knocked into the fire and sparks flew.

A whole wedge of the rough circle of people crowded together broke off, running toward the eastern boarder of the field. "Let’s get the hell out of here!" someone shouted.

Maureen dropped to a crouch beside Phoebe, who could see nothing by dirty legs and blood-splattered pants running past her, bumping into each other and then scrambling away. People were dashing toward the woods, others were steadying their sights.

From the west, guns were fired. The screams intensified as a dozen people collapsed to the ground. Fresh blood ran over Phoebe’s fingers, and then thunder broke out above her head as the rebels fought back.

She climbed to her knees and started scuttling toward the woods, away from the gunfire. "Where are you going?" Maureen asked.

"I don’t want to get shot."

"I want to fight," Maureen told her, hurrying to keep up.

Phoebe glared at her. "You aren’t even a slave!"

"Does it matter? I’m trying to help you!"

Phoebe didn’t know how Maureen could help her, seeing as they were both crawling with one hand holding their skirts up around their thighs. A man ran past them and was shot cleanly through the heart; they wiggled around his body and kept going.

Cuffie, who had lived with Phoebe at the Chilton’s plantation, dragged them into a thicket between the trees. Laying next to him was the body of a slave Phoebe didn’t know, his hand still folded around a pistol.

"They think they can come back here and force us to be slaves again," Cuffie snarled. "They think I’d rather be alive than free." He got up on his knees and screamed across the field, "You don’t know a goddamned thing, white man!"

"Get down!" Maureen snapped. Cuffie snarled at her and hit her in the face, sending a fresh waterfall of blood from her nose. Maureen rolled back on the ground and gagged.

"Cuffie!" a man shouted from the northern woods. "I know that’s you! I heard your voice!"

"It’s Cullen," Cuffie marveled, his face lighting up.

"Oh, God take me now," Maureen moaned.

"I’m still your over-seer," Cullen went on, "and I order you to stop this madness!"

Cuffie started laughing. "He thinks he’s still my master." On his knees again, he waved his arms and hollered, "Over here, Master Cullen! I’m right over here, waiting for you to tell me what to do!"

"Stay where you are, I’ll come to you."

"Time to run," Phoebe said, lifting Maureen’s head up. The Irishwoman gurgled, half conscious.

Phoebe was still trying to rouse her when Cullen broke through the brush, expecting his regretful and frightened servant to be waiting for him in tears. Instead, Cuffie threw a wild kick and the man rolled to the ground as his former slave pointed a pistol at his head.

"Cuffie, Cuffie my god," Cullen panted.

"You filthy white man!"

Cullen held out a hand. "Cuffie," he said again. "Please, do you really want to do this?"

Cuffie’s reply was to pull the trigger and scream furiously as the gun backfired in his hand. A finger smacked against Maureen’s cheek, finally knocking her awake. Phoebe saw Cullen’s eyes move to the dead rebel’s pistol, still wrapped in his hand, and lunged.

He was too fast for her, and a second later she lay helpless on the ground in front of him. Cuffie howled for an instant before Cullen put a bullet in his brain, then turned to Maureen.

"I don’t understand how you got into this," he said, keeping his gun on Phoebe.

Maureen’s eyes flickered open and she winced. "Please don’t shoot me," she said.

"I should. I should shoot you in the leg and let you bleed to death."

Through her swollen, unrecognizable face, Phoebe thought she grinned at him. "Aren’t you glad we came to the colonies?" she asked.

"You wretch," he began, but she had already passed out.

He dragged Phoebe through the brush to a horse she remembered seeing him ride before. He was muttering curse words as he pulled a coil of rope from the saddle bag and pitched one end over a tree.

"No!" Phoebe shouted, trying to pull away. He dug the barrel of the gun deep in between her ribs and wrapped the rope around her neck. It was coarse and as thick as her thumb.

She screamed curses, in English, in her mother’s native language, in the name of Jesus Christ, and then he was hoisting her up in the air. The rope slid down the branch until it wedged in the crook, and Phoebe was dragged along so that she slammed brutally into the trunk of the tree. Her hands dug at the noose until it was thick with blood from her fingers and smeared with flesh.

Her lungs sucked at nothing. Each time she tried to calm herself, tried to wait it out, all her mind could find to do was breathe. Her mouth gaped open and closed like a fish’s. Her heels scratched the bark off the tree trunk, trying to find enough purchase to relieve the weight from her neck, but the sap just leaked across her shins.

Cullen stood by and watched, the end of the rope held under his foot. When she began to rotate away from him, he tugged the hem of her skirt, and without thinking, she lashed out with one leg.

He’d always said it was important for slaves to have good shoes. "If they can’t walk, they can’t work," he had pointed out, and Laurence had agreed. Phoebe had shoes with real laces and hard, heavy soles, which she used then to catch him so firmly under the chin that his head snapped back with a crunch like the sound of rocks breaking open.

He flew onto his back and didn’t move. The rope under his foot swung free and Phoebe felt herself begin to drop to the ground, then snap to a stop.

The rope had snagged in the crook of the branches, too narrow to allow the knot Cullen had tied in it to pass. Phoebe reached out, but it was too high up, and the ground was just inches beneath her feet. She dangled, kicked, her chest felt as if it were being pressed in a vise, and then the forest began to blur, the gunshots and screaming became more and more distant, she heard the sound of the wind rising up, but the gust she was expecting never came...

Epilogue

September 17, 1739

Maureen took the reins of the cart. Her hands clenched involuntarily as she gave the horse a quick snap and it lurched forward. Soon they were moving forward at a steady clip, two carts behind and another in front.

Frasier was holding the shotgun, his eyes perpetually moving between the trees. At least three dozen of the rebel slaves had escaped. Some continued to trek toward Saint Augustine, but many were still lingering in the woods, sneaking out to steal food.

There had been hangings every day that week, and black heads looked up from the top of each fence post through the swarm of flies surrounding them. Maureen had been taken to the house of Anthony Summer, where his wife looked after her until it was learned that Frasier had miraculously survived the sacking and burning of his house. His memory trailed off sometime during the course of his fever, and when he woke up, he had rolled into a chilly creek half a mile from his property. It was the waters, most likely, which had brought down his temperature.

Maureen had no desire to fill in the blanks, other than, "Cullen carried you."

He had spoken with a lawyer and was in the process of selling off the land, the two slaves he had left, and the pile of ashes that had once been his beautiful home. His withdrawal from the Ashley River militia company was pending, but he wasn’t going to wait. He packed up the few belongings that had survived the rebellion – a locket among them – and made immediate plans to leave for Boston.

No one doubted Maureen when she said Cuffie had broken her nose, or that he had dragged her along by force. The townspeople seemed to regard the incident, the deaths, as a horrible mistake, a tragedy brought about by the slaves’ inability to learn their purpose. Their actions, it was agreed, were entirely uncalled for.

Maureen’s anxiety began to ease as the hours passed. The further she got from Charlestown and the trails, the less likely her part in the incident would come out. She didn’t know what she had been thinking, she couldn’t justify her actions except to say that once things had begun, they raced like a spooked horse. She hadn’t had time to question or consider or stop.

"Are you hungry?" Frasier asked.

"No."

She hadn’t been eating much in the past week. Her jaw hurt to chew.

"Would you mind cutting me a piece of cheese?"

She lay the reins on her lap, lifted a burlap sack from under the seat. Reaching inside, her and brushed against a sheet of folded paper.

"Oh, that’s for you," Frasier said.

She glanced at him. "For me?"

"Your papers."

"The indenture?"

"The release."

She stared at him until he chuckled uncomfortably.

"I don’t deserve this," she told him.

"I’ve learned my lesson," he replied. "You’re welcome to stay on as a paid servant, but I won’t try to keep you by force."

Maureen spread the pages out on her lap and ran her fingers over the words.

"I can teach you to read it, too, if you like."

She blinked at tears. If only he knew...

Her silence was making him uneasy. "Didn’t you come to the colonies to start over, Maureen?"

"Yes. But...I don’t like the woman I’ve been since I came here."

"An indentured servant. A slave, essentially. Now you’re free." He smiled at her. "You can start again, if you like."

She continued to stare at the pages in her hand. Boston. Another world away. Another chance.

"All right then," she agreed, as the cart passed over the South Carolina line.

The End

November 16, 1999