“Do what?”

“What you were thinking! Right when I shouted.”

Gullah Joe threw up his hands in despair, but he set to work, making Denmark and Fishy help him, moving charms into a new circle, then putting an open box in the midst of it. “Tell him go in box. Put him whole self in box.”

“Did you understand him, Calvin?”

Calvin moaned in pain.

“Send out your doodlebug! Let him catch it and save it. It’s your only chance, Calvin! Send your doodlebug to Gullah Joe, go into the box he’s holding. Do it, Calvin!”

Panting shallowly, Calvin complied as best he could. Gullah Joe kept tossing a fine powder into the circle. It wasn’t till the tenth throw that he shouted. “You see that? Part him go in! Look a-that!”

Another cast of the powder, and this time Margaret also saw the spark.

“All bright him! Inside, go all inside!”

“Do it, Calvin. Your whole attention, put it inside that box. Everything that’s you, into the box!”

He stopped moaning. He rolled onto his back, his eyes staring straight up. “He’s done all he can do!” cried Margaret. “He’s exhausted.”

“He dead,” said Fishy.

Gullah Joe slammed the lid on the box, turned it upside down, and sat on it.

“You hatching that?” asked Fishy.

“Inside circle, inside my hair.” Gullah Joe grinned. “This time he no get out!”

“All right, Alvin,” Margaret murmured. “Come quickly.”

She leaned back against Denmark’s wife, who knelt behind her like a cushion. “I’m so tired,” she said.

“We all sleep now,” said Denmark.

“Not me,” said Gullah Joe.

Margaret closed her eyes and looked out into the city again. The water was calm again and the panic had died down, but the revolt was over for the night. Killing had been driven out of the hearts of the Blacks.

But now the thought of killing was showing up in other hearts. Whites were rushing to the palace, demanding that someone find out who started the plot. It had to be a plot, all the slaves starting up at once. Only the miraculous intervention of the waves had saved them. Do something, they demanded. Catch the ringleaders of the revolt.

And King Arthur listened. He called in his advisers and listened to them. Soon there were questioners in the streets, directing groups of soldiers as they gathered Blacks for questioning.

How long? thought Margaret. How long before Denmark Vesey’s name comes up?

Long before dawn.

Margaret rose to her feet. “No time for rest now,” she said. “Alvin will come here. Tell him what you’ve done. Don’t harm Calvin’s body in any way. Keep it as fresh as you can.”

Gullah Joe rolled his eyes. “Where you go?”

“It’s time for my audience with the King.”

Lady Ashworth spent the entire rebellion throwing up in her bedroom. The flood, too. For her husband had found out about her liaison with that boy—slaves who had once been docile now suddenly seemed to take relish in sowing dissension between her and Lord Ashworth. In vain did she plead that it was only once, in vain did she beg for forgiveness. For an hour she sat in the parlor, trembling and weeping, as her husband brandished a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other, one of which he would set down from time to time in order to take another swig of bourbon.