‘Moses!’ Girodet said again, wanting to shake the basket with frustration but managing to restrain himself. It had taken bribes and bargaining (food, liquor, women), threats and violence, finally the promise of setting his wife and children free to convince the Negro to cooperate. And now he was holding out!

‘I still have your children!’ Girodet said. ‘Can you hear me, Moses? Your wife and your children!’

‘Seven seconds,’ Bergerard said.

Girodet leaned in, agonised, desperately willing the Negro’s head to give him a sign, a twitch of the cheek or of the lips, if not the eyes blinking as they had agreed to. Anything! But quickly, by Christ, for the window was closing rapidly.

Ten to twenty seconds, post-decapitation, Jacques de Dieu had estimated, until life slipped the body entire.

‘Do it, Moses! Tell me!’

Bergerard said, ‘Ten seconds.’

Girodet snapped, gave in to his anger and slapped the severed head across the cheek. It rolled around in the bottom of the basket. Then the doctor reached in and gripped the Negro by his ears, picked up the head and stood and held it in front of him.

‘Hear me, Moses!’ he said.

‘Fifteen seconds.’

‘Hear me!’

And then, by God, the eyelids opened.

Girodet almost dropped the head from shock. He saw the pupils dilate. He felt a great trembling through his body. It had happened. The slave Moses had opened his eyes.

‘If you can hear me, Moses,’ the doctor said, ‘blink!’

The eyes blinked once, slow as a drunkard’s.

Girodet said, ‘How many children have you sired, Moses?’

The eyes closed, but then stayed closed as the seconds ticked . . . two . . . three . . . then slowly, separately, each gluey lid opened on a bloodshot eye. There seemed much effort behind it, much will.

‘Yes!’ Girodet said. ‘How many children do you have? Blink the number, Moses! Blink it!’

Once.

Twice.

‘Yes! How many?’

The eyelids closed.

Then nothing.

Girodet waited.

But it was over.

After a moment, he dropped the head back into the basket.

‘Merde,’ he said. Moses had five children.

He turned to Bergerard. ‘Time?’

‘Twenty-two seconds,’ Bergerard said.

‘You saw it?’

‘Everything.’

Christophe Bergerard handed the doctor a rag to wipe his bloody hands.

‘Well,’ Girodet said. ‘Not too bad.’

‘When do you want to try again?’ There was another slave locked up in the washhouse.

‘Tomorrow,’ Girodet said. The beautiful mulatto girl was waiting for him. ‘Will you write it all up for me, Christophe?’

‘Of course.’

‘There will be more arriving on Thursday with the agent, too. If he can get through, we won’t be short.’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

Dr Antoine Girodet left the courtyard. He would have to wash up before he saw Josephine.

Bergerard looked down at the head in the basket. One eye had opened again. It was fixed on him but saw right through Bergerard, somewhere far beyond.

‘Barbu!’ he called out.