Pinching her lips again, Ta-Ta kept shaking her head. She was trying to tell him. something.

100.But what did she mean? His mama? Dragonard? To keep his lips pinched together? dosed? Peter could not understand what she meant. He could not understand anything she was doing or muttering. She reeked of sweetness, too. Peter whiffed a strong odor coming from her body.

A voice then called to them from the landing below.

Peter turned and saw Rachel Selby standing at the foot of the steps. She called, "Boy, it's time for you to go to bed. And you, you crazy black woman, what are you hoping to find out here?"

Both Peter and Ta-Ta sat motionless now.

Rachel looked more harassed than usual tonight. Although she was dressed in a delicate lace shawl and a new black bombazine dress with a glittering bib of black jet beads, she did not seem to be having a good time. She looked tired.

She shrilled louder at Peter and Ta-Ta, "There's enough intrusion in this house tonight without having you two! Go away. Go to bed. Both of you!"

Puzzled by her hysterical attitude, Peter turned to look at Ta-Ta.

But Ta-Ta had disappeared. All the doors on the top landing were shut. There was no sign of Ta-Ta anyplace. She had gone back to her room.

Rachel Selby called impatiently, "Why are you dawdling, boy? Go to bed."

Peter reluctantly rose to his feet. This was not what he had thought a big party was going to be like at all.

Leaving the noise, the songs, and the laughter of the party below, Peter went sadly to his bedroom.

The noise from the party hi the big house tonight did not carry through the woods to Niggertown. The guests came and went hi their carriages and wagons, but the Negroes still slept.

Niggertown was silent now, lit by a high moon. There was no movement on the dirt road running between the two main rows of steep-roofed cabins. Even the yellow dogs were sleeping.

The only activity was at the rear of the six cabins set away from the rest. These were the oldest and most 101.

dilapidated slave quarters on the Star, and a black man named Priam lived in the smallest of the six cabins with a woman who had borne him eight children. The black woman was called Betsy and was soon due to have the ninth child of Priam's.

A second man, named Toby, shared the cabin with Betsy and Priam. Toby had been promised a young wench from Mama Gomorrah when she sent down the next batch of saplings from the Shed next spring.

Tonight Priam and Betsy lay sleeping together on a pallet on the dirt floor, and Toby lay by himself near the door.

Toby was the first to hear the commotion outside the cabin. He rose to see what was happening, when the door to the cabin suddenly opened and moonlight poured onto the floor.

Chad Tucker barged into the cabin, and behind him, Monk followed with a whip coiled in his hands. Priam, Betsy, and Toby had had them here at the cabin before.

"Nigger!" Tucker bellowed. "Talk so I know where you are." The darkness was filled with his coarse laughing.

Monk stood next to Tucker and whispered, "Toby's back here. That must be Priam there with his wench." Monk was still cautious about betraying the slaves.

Covering Betsy with Ms arm, Priam said, "This wench about to have a sucker, Master Tucker, sir."

"It ain't her I come to see," Tucker answered as he moved toward Priam. Kicking his naked body with his boot, he said, "I come to see if you need some freshening up."

"No, Master Tucker, sir. My back ain't healing good, master, sir."

"How's your mouth doing? Have you been blabbing around about being sold?"

"No, Master Tucker, sir. I ain't saying nothing."

Snatching the whip from Monk's hand, Tucker said, "You know you're coming with me up to the public road tomorrow night, don't you? You and that Toby buck are both coming with me."

Putting Ms arm around Betsy, Priam pleaded, "TMs wench might be having her baby tomorrow, master, sir!"

102.

The whip cracked in the darkness, and Tucker boomed, "Don't sass me, nigger shit!"

"I ain't sassing-"

The whip snapped a second tune. This time it struck Betsy. Tucker said, "There you go doing it again."

Seeing that the whip had snagged across Betsy's bare side, Priam forgot about Tucker's temper and jumped to protect her.

Casting the whip behind him, Tucker brought it down on Priam's back one, two, then three times. Priam writhed with pain, holding tighter onto Betsy. Her pregnant stomach began to heave.

Priam did not speak now. Toby did not speak. They waited for Tucker and Monk to shut the door of the cabin.

As soon as Tucker had gone, Priam examined Betsy and looked at the wound gashed by the whip. He pleaded with her to speak to him.

Betsy only moaned and tossed her head in agony. The shock of the whip was bringing her baby.

Toby nervously watched Priam as he clutched Betsy. He said, "Let's me runs get Mama Gomorrah."

Priam grabbed Toby's shoulder and shook his head. He whispered, "No. She asks us questions. No, Toby."

Toby pleaded, "But your Betsy's birthing!"

Priam stared down at Betsy's face, wet with perspiration. He said, "If we talks about Tucker and this . . ." He stopped and shook his head. "No, Toby, we can't talks. We can just brings the baby ourselves."

"You and me birth the baby?" Toby gasped.

"It's the only way, without talking. Without showing these marks. Without us all dying."

"Priam, you crazy."

"Betsy and her baby and me are all crazy to live, Toby. That's how we crazy. We tells, and Tucker comes kills us."

Toby nervously scratched his head. "I ain't birthed no babies."

"Me neither. But..."

Then Priam hurried in the darkness of the cabin to find, first, a small piece of wood for Betsy to bite when the pain became worse.

103.

Chad Tucker and Monk walked along in the moonlight. Tucker recoiled his whip, and stuffing the butt into his belt, he asked Monk, "You enjoys that, boy?"

Monk murmured, "Yes, Master Tucker, sir."

"What's you so quiet about the last couple of days for, boy?"

Shaking his head, Monk answered soberly, "Nothing, Master Tucker, sir."

The sight in the cabin moments ago had reminded Monk how cruel Tucker could be. He was worried what he would do to him if Qaudia told about them lying on the tabletop three days ago. Monk did not know what craziness that Claudia would do next. Tucker terrorized the black people in Niggertown, but it was Qaudia who was filling Monk's life with fear.

Tucker said, "Let's go home and give Qaudie her good time now."

Monk looked at him in horror.

Studying the round whiteness of the moon, Tucker said, "You ain't seeming so hot tonight, boy. What's the matter? You getting tired of my missus?"

Monk's heart quickened. He said immediately, "No, Master Tucker, sir. I ain't getting tired of nothing. I just do like you says."

"That's a good boy," Tucker said, putting his arm around Monk's broad shoulder. "What you need to perk you up is some real excitement. And tomorrow night you'll get it. Tomorrow night we sell those niggers to George Gresham."

"Yes, Master Tucker sir," Monk said, thinking how exciting those slave-selling trips used to be. But now his life had been suddenly ruined by Qaudia Tucker. He was worried about tonight, tomorrow, the next day. He was beginning to feel just like any other slave on the Star-living daily in fear. Qaudia Tucker could have him castrated.

6.The Dewitt Place

"Drunkards! Whores!"

Rachel Selby's shouts baffled her husband the following morning. Apart from smacking of improprieties, her words today were specifically more rude than the usual accusations she leveled against people.

It was noon now. Melissa and Peter had gone outside to play, and the servants were busily putting the house back into order.

Rachel still had not emerged from her bedroom. She was refusing to unlock her door, answering any inquiries about her health by shouting that she did not want to breathe the air in a house that had been contaminated by drunkards and whores.

Drunkards? Whores? Selby sat alone at the dining-room table, sipping his third cup of milky coffee after lunch, and tried to recall the events of the previous night. To the best of his knowledge, every last guest had bent over backward to respect Rachel's obsession about abstaining from liquor. There certainly had been no drunkards at the supper.

As for the matter of whores, Selby could not pinpoint a single incident in which a lady might have misconducted herself in front of his wife. Rachel had composed the guest list herself, inviting only middle-aged married couples who indulged in conversations about home, family, and planting. And if the talk had ventured from those three subjects, it only went as far as politics, the impending war of France with Spain and its implications on Louisiana and the American states.

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105.

Sitting with one elbow propped on the table, Selby rested his head on his hand, idly drawing straight lines into the damask tablecloth with his coffee spoon and wondering if his wife had taken some new kind of turn.

Selby suddenly sat upright. Had Rachel smelled alcohol on one of the men who had gone out to the barn for a quick drink of corn whiskey? That could be the explanation for her calling people drunkards.

But whores? What would have been the cause of that slander against the good women who had come escorted last night by their husbands? Selby would swear on a mountain of Bibles that those women, one and all, were clean-living, churchgoing souls who led a good and happy...

Happy. Happiness. That was the key, he feared. Rachel might have snapped under the strain of the misery that she had created for herself. She could have finally broken down with the realization that other females in the world were Christian and clean-living, but still happy. Whatever the reasons were, though, something in Rachel's mind had put her into this state of mental frustration. He had never seen her quite so unbalanced, so... crazy.

Selby sat slumped over his coffeecup weighing the possible causes of his wife's advanced case of misanthropy, when he suddenly heard a noise. Looking up, he saw the young housemaid named Biddy burst through the archway into the dining room, holding her white apron to her face. Selby sat erect on his chair, staring at the young Negress as she ran sobbing hysterically toward the kitchen door.

"Biddy!" he called out to her. He knew that Biddy was a foolish, screeching girl, but he had never seen her in such a state.

Not stopping to answer Selby, Biddy raced toward the kitchen door.

The door pushed forward from the other side, and Storky barged into the dining room, almost knocking Biddy to the floor.

Biddy dropped her apron in surprise and wailed, "Oh, Miss Storky!"

Storky was dressed in a long white smock covered 106.

by a starched, floor-length pinafore apron. With a white handkerchief tied around her horselike face, she looked at Biddy and then glanced over at Selby sitting at the table.

Selby nodded toward the archway through which Biddy had just come and then to the spot where she stood with Storky. He shrugged.

Suspiciously narrowing her eyes, Storky grabbed Biddy by both shoulders, and shaking her back and forth, demanded, "What do you mean by this? Bawling all over the house likes this? Tell me the meaning of this, wench."

Biddy squirmed, holding her skinny black arms over both her face and the array of pigtails that covered her head.

Slapping away Biddy's hands, Storky shouted angrily, "Don't you try to hide yourself from me, wench. Don't you try to hide yourself from Miss Storky."

Biddy screamed in her falsetto voice, "I ain't been pestered, Miss Storky. Honest, Miss Storky. I ain't been doing what Miss Selby says I been doing. I ain't been pestered."

Hearing the mention of his wife's name, Selby rose from his chair, and striding over to the door, he asked Biddy, "What did Mrs. Selby say to you, girl?"

Biddy began hysterically, "Oh, Master Selby, sir. Miss Selby, she says I lets white men grabs in my skirts and I lets white men takes liberties with me, and I-"

Storky slapped Biddy's mouth. "Shame on you! Shame on you telling lies about white folk, you nigger wench. Shame on you."

Biddy looked at Selby to protest, but seeing Storky pulling back her arm to slap her again, she grabbed her apron and ran screeching into the kitchen.

As soon as Biddy had disappeared, Storky looked at Selby and said, "You can whips me if you wants, Master Selby, sir, for stopping her. But that girl sures was lying." Storky was now a picture of her usual propriety.

Selby asked, "Have you been up to Mrs. Selby's room today, Storky? Have you heard anything?"

Lowering her head, Storky answered, "The excite- 107.

ment from the supper has made us all a little tired, Master Selby, sir."

Selby appreciated Storky's diplomacy. He said softly, "I hope you're right, Storky."

Lifting her head, she said, "If Miss Selby does have something in her mind about wenches and white folk, Master Selby, sir, it ain't to do with that Biddy girl. Biddy needs what Miss Selby is saying, all right, but Biddy is scared of men. Biddy always been that way."

Selby nodded. He knew that fact about Biddy.