“I think you telling me you find this White man?”

“I did, but he ain’t dead yet.”

Gullah Joe slapped the table hard. Denmark was startled and his jocular mood fell away. “You lose you courage?”

“She knew I was coming,” said Denmark.

“A woman, she!”

“She got him down to the battery, all them White folks around, you think I’m going to show that knife, let alone cut a White boy with it?”

“Boy? This White man be maybe him a child?”

“No, he a man, but he be young. Bet he don’t shave.” Denmark remembered how Calvin looked. So empty. Like his woman. That White witch knew all about her.

Against his will, Denmark looked for her. There she was, mending clothes in a corner. She didn’t look up. It took all her concentration just to get the needle into and out of the cloth. She used to be hot-hearted like that Fishy girl. Maybe I could have won her over fairly, if I tried. If I set her free. But I had to control her, didn’t I? Just like a White man. I was master.

“How he be?” demanded Gullah Joe.

“Who?”

“The devil him body!”

“He pretty far gone, Gullah Joe.”

“Not far enough.” Gullah Joe glanced over to the circle that contained the captive. Denmark saw that it was twice as thick with knotwork charms as it had been when he left early in the morning.

“He been trying to escape?”

“Be maybe he already escape, him.”

“Well, if he did, wouldn’t we know it? Wouldn’t you be dead?”

“Be maybe he learn too much,” said Gullah Joe. “Look! Look a-that.”

Though there was not a touch of a breeze in the attic, one of the charms suddenly swayed, then bounced up and down.

“He doing that?” asked Denmark.

Gullah Joe looked at him with scorn. “No, fool, they cockroaches in the charm, they be making her bounce.”

“How can he do that if you got him captive?”

Gullah Joe might have had an answer, but at that moment they both heard the door opening downstairs. Gullah Joe seemed to leap straight up in the air, and Denmark was about to let out an exclamation when Joe shook his head violently and covered his own mouth with his hand as a sign for silence.

Denmark leaned over close. “I thought you said nobody could get in here.”

There were footsteps on the stairs. No effort was being made to muffle them, either. Clump, clump, clump. Slow progress, many feet.

Finally Denmark realized what he was hearing. “It’s her,” he whispered. “She brought him here.”

Her voice wafted up the stairs. “Indeed I did,” she said. “Step aside, Denmark Vesey. It’s Gullah Joe I need to talk to.”

Gullah Joe danced around his desk like a child desperate to pee. Nobody had ever pierced his defenses so easily. No one had ever called him by name when he didn’t want them to. Whoever this was had to be so powerful that Gullah Joe hardly knew what charms to try. She had already passed by some of his most powerful ones.