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sleep in the
house, but it’s my job to make sure each night, everything’s locked
up tight, not just the house but the kitchen and the store-rooms
and every other building on the place. How she came to return
without a soul knowin’ of it I can’t imagine, nor why, if she’d let
herself in, she didn’t send at once for Ariette, and have Ellie
draw her up a bath—”
    “I thought you said you’s talkin’ to your
sister,” growled Parton’s voice. “I didn’t say you could go passin’
the time of day with every damn murderin’ darky in the jail.”
    “It’s nothing to be concerned about,” soothed
Hannibal. “The butler knows the girls’ mother, and begged to be
remembered to her, that’s all. I take it nobody was out between the
house and the river after it grew dark?” he added, in French, and
there was an infinitely soft whisper in the blackness, like the
purl of distant water over stone.
    “No one,” said Ariette’s voice. “Because so
many are gone up to town tonight for the fireworks, you understand,
the militia patrols are on their guard, for people who might take
advantage of that fact.”
    “So Madame could have returned in a chaise,
for instance, or even walked in from the woods, and none would have
seen her?” asked Rose.
    “She must have done so. I saw the lamps lit
in her room, and her shadow moving against the jalousie blinds,”
said the younger woman. “But as to how she came, and why she didn’t
call one of us to help her undress and make her some coffee—”
    “And this overseer,” went on Rose, “whose
name we shall not speak—” She threw a warning glance at Parton and
the other guard, still glowering behind her by the fire. “Did he by
any chance understand fireworks, or explosives, or chemicals, or
anything of that sort?”
    More murmuring in the darkness, this time
several voices. Then Ariette said, “He did, Madame,” and there was
a trace of wonderment in her voice. “Blaz – the foreman, you
understand – says that Michie Moberly used to work in the mines in
South Carolina, and later in a factory in the north somewhere,
before coming to New Orleans. But he left, only a week after—” Her
voice hesitated on the name, “—after Michie Jérôme…”
    “And when was that?”
    “Just after Mardi Gras, Madame,” said the
young woman. “Ten days ago.”
    “And was Madame grieved,” asked Rose softly,
“when Michie Moberly left her so suddenly?”
    There was a long stillness in the jail. A
baby cried in the blackness – an infant a few months old, by the
sound – and a woman crooned gentle words to it, but Rose could
almost feel the glances that went from prisoner to prisoner.
    At length Ariette whispered, “Not as much as
we – all of us – thought she would be, Madame. They were… Well,
there was talk…”
    LeRoy muttered something, savagely, to her,
and Ariette turned her face from the judas to murmur a reply.
“LeRoy says—” She looked back, “—it was more than talk.” She
stammered with discomfort at passing the tale along. “And it is
true, Madame, that Madame would… would go riding with Michie
Moberly in the twilight, and come home with… with stains on her
dress, as if she had lain on the ground. But – Please, she said if
I told anything of this she’d have my child sold—”
    “But she’s gone,” said Rose quietly.
    “I never did it!” repeated the girl. “None
here knew she was coming back tonight! Please, please Madame, speak
to those you know in New Orleans, to the white judges and the men
who’ll be on the jury! Yes, I did wrong, I know I did wrong letting
Michie Jérôme come into my bed! But—”
    “You did no wrong,” said Rose firmly. “Any
judge in the United States will tell you that to do other than what
you did – what you let him do – was against the law.”
    “Not against God’s law, M’am.” Ariette’s
voice sank to a breath. “Not with his wife there beneath his roof.
I knew God would