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gallery outside her room, the smell of burned
sugar in the air and the taste of the low-hanging smoke when they’d
burn over the harvested fields. The slaves’ celebration, when the
harvest was done.
    By the way Livia checked her stride, and
stood for a moment looking at the mill’s double doors, Rose
wondered what it was that she saw in her heart, and if she’d have
told the truth, had Rose asked her.
    “It’s probably best you stay back, Madame,”
whispered Hannibal – a bit diffidently, because there was no
telling how Livia would react at the prospect of being left out of
things. “Alas,” he added with a bow, “you are dressed too fine to
make anyone believe you a slave.”
    “Nonsense,” Livia retorted. “The dresses
Jérôme Neuville used to buy Ariette – according to Candide, anyway
– would put yours to shame, Rose. Twice as fine as anything he’d
put out money for, to clothe his wife, Candide says. But then
Candide’s always been a jealous witch.”
    For a moment Rose had a ghastly vision of her
mother-in-law insisting on accompanying her and Hannibal up to the
jail, and informing Lieutenant Parton and his militiamen exactly
what she thought of out-at-elbows crackers gallopping around the
countryside in the middle of the night…
    But Livia stepped back without demur, and
slipped like a shadow through the door of the mill.
    “Who’s that there?” called out Lieutenant
Parton, as Rose and Hannibal came around the corner of the mill and
approached the jail.
    “The name’s Sefton; I’m down from town
visiting Mr. Levesque.” Hannibal bowed – slightly – and offered his
card, which Parton looked at suspiciously and handed back, as if it
were Hannibal’s fault that Parton couldn’t read. “My girl here is
sister to poor Mrs. Neuville’s maid, and begged for the chance to
at least speak to her. Swears she’d never have set the fire or
poisoned her mistress—” He shrugged. “But I didn’t think there’d be
any harm in letting them speak.”
    He casually dipped his hand in his pocket,
and the low glimmer of the lantern-light and the fire the guards
had made before the slave-jail door caught a metallic glint in his
hand when it came out again.
    “No, no harm in it,” grunted Parton, and took
the coin. “But who else would have done a thing like that, if not
the girl? That’s what I want to know.”
    He followed Rose to the door of the jail, and
stood beside her, smelling of cheap whiskey and soiled body-linen.
“You speak English, now, honey.”
    She turned upon him him the wide, questioning
gaze employed by the guiltiest of her schoolgirls when confronted
with their crimes. “ Pardon ?” Her eyes went pleadingly to
Hannibal.
    “She has no English, I’m afraid,” apologized
the fiddler. “I doubt Ariette does, either—”
    While Parton scowled at this, Rose turned to
the barred judas in the door, called through it, “Ariette? I’m Rose
Vitrac, one of Arnaud Levesque’s guests, I’ve come to help
you—”
    “I did nothing!” In the reeking darkness
within the jail, the reflection of the firelight showed little but
the gleam of eyes. The face of the maidservant, brought close to
the judas, was scarcely more than a pale blur, but the girl’s hands
gripped the close-set bars on the tiny window. She spoke low and
swiftly in French, as if aware that the guards would end the
conversation within minutes. “I swear it, I never brought her
anything to drink tonight! I didn’t even know she was home! She’d
gone up to town three days ago, and left the house locked up: LeRoy
walked all around it like he usually does, just after supper-time,
and saw nothing—”
    “That’s a fact, M’am,” affirmed a man’s deep
voice from the darkness. “Michie Jérôme’s particular about locking
things up, and so is – so was…” His voice hesitated over the change
of tense, over the fiery tragedy that had taken place and the
darker tragedy to come, “…so was Madame. I don’t