Master grits his teeth. “I will not have shenanigans under my roof.”

“What’s shenanigans?” Thomas asks.

Master looks fit to burst.

“Playing around,” Miss Martha says. “Like when you want to run in the house.”

“Oh,” Master Thomas says. “Don’t worry, Grandfather. We can play shenanigans outside.”

Master Jeremiah throws his head back and laughs. “I will look forward to that.”

Chapter 13

Henry

At night when the kitchen woman gives me a plate of food, I take a portion and wrap it in an oil cloth. I can’t get out of the habit of saving something back. After years of hungering, I have a great need to keep vittles at the ready.

I eat my meal propped against the coach house, looking at the pillars and windows and balconies of the Johnson home. I don’t know if Father Michael would call this coveting. I don’t want this house. Just a house like this. With a room for sitting down and a room for eating and a room for writing letters, all with glass in the windows and a fire in every hearth.

Through the noise of the cicadas, I hear music behind me, rhythmic and swinging. I know it must be the slaves, though something about it sounds like home. Not the tune or the voices. Something deeper than that.

It nudges at a longing in me. I miss my family. I miss Ireland. The hills and the crag rocks, sure, but also gathering like this, with a fiddle and a fire, turning a hard-worked day into something to sing about. I miss the spirit of the place and the people who make it so. I came here for a better life, and I’m eating, that’s true. But I’m eating alone.

When my plate’s empty, I go to the edge of the trees and stand unnoticed in the shadows, watching. The man who drove Mister Keeler’s coach stands by an open fire, a fiddle to his chin, fingers flying over the strings. There’re men and women jigging around him, mostly house slaves, but a few from the field, or so I guess from the condition of their clothes. I recognize Red, the horseman. Blind Bessie and old Ben. The two children who bring buckets of water for my work. And Sarah.

The tune the man plays has a jaunty bounce that whips everyone into clapping and hopping.

I pick my way closer, but as I come near and they notice me, they quit their dancing, one by one, and then the music stops as well. All of them stare. Silent.

“A fine evening,” I say.

They look at their feet. A few mumble, “Yes, sir.”

“I heard you playing,” I say. “I thought I might come over and listen.”

They don’t respond. They’re waiting for me to go, pulling back from me like I’m a viper slithered into their gathering.

My eyes are drawn to Sarah. In the moonlight she seems to glow with a yellow-brown gloss, like polished wood.