“Will you help me find him? From what Balzac said, he lurks by the docks.”

“Oh, it be easy a-find him. But how you going a-stop him from killing you and me and the White man, all three?”

“Do you think he would?”

“A White woman and a White man who know that he gots the names? He going a-think I be the one a-tell you.” She drew a finger across her throat. “My neck, he cut that. Stab you in the heart. Tear him open by the belly. That’s what happen to the ones who tell.”

“Fishy, I can’t explain it to you, but I can assure you of this—we will not be taken by surprise.”

“I druther be surprise iffen he kill us,” said Fishy. She mimed slitting her own throat again. “Let him sneak up behind.”

“He won’t kill us at all. We’ll stand at a distance.”

“What good that going a-do us?”

“There’s much I can learn about a man from a distance, once I know who he is.”

“I still gots a room to finish cleaning.”

“I’ll help you,” said Margaret.

Fishy almost laughed out loud. “You the strangest White lady.”

“Oh, I suppose that would cause comment.”

“You just set here,” said Fishy. “I be back soon. Then I be on your half-day. They have to let me go out with you.”

* * *

Denmark spent a fruitless morning asking around about a White man who suddenly went empty. He’d knock on a door, pretending to be asking for work for a nonexistent White master—just so the slave who talked to him had a story to tell when somebody asked them who was at the door. The slaves all knew who Denmark was, of course—nobody was more famous among the Blacks of Camelot than the taker of names. Unless it was Gullah Joe, the bird man who flew out to the slaveships. So there wasn’t a soul who didn’t try to help. Trouble was, all these people with no name, they had no sharp edge to them. They vaguely remembered hearing this or that about a White man who was sick or a White man who couldn’t walk, but in each case it turned out to be some old cripple or a man who’d already died of some disease. Not till afternoon did he finally hear a story that sounded like it might be what he needed.

He followed the rumor to a cheap boardinghouse where yes, indeed, two White men had shared a room, and one of them, the Northerner, had taken sick with a strange malady. “He eat, he drink, he pee, he do all them thing,” said the valet who had cared for their room. “I change him trouser three times a day, wash everything twice a day.” But they had left just that morning. “French man, he gots a letter, he pack up all, take away that empty man, now they be both all gone.”

“Did he say where he taking the sick man?” asked Denmark.