Everybody knew the very hour when she was hanged. From the top porch, I watched riders setting out along the road that led up from the harbour, bringing the news to Langton. Miss-bella still hadn’t left her bed, hadn’t said a word, so no one knew her feelings about any of it, yea or nay. Langton met them at the gates. I stood and watched, blood knocking into the top of my skull. He looked up and saw me, curled his lip, then went back inside, racketing the door back into its jamb so the walls shook. My belly flinched like a struck nail and a sob heaved its way up out of me. I wanted to shout, call him back, tell him there was no hiding place, no herbs. It was a mistake! It was a mistake!

But, like all good intentions, that one came too late.

What happened that morning is a dark cloth wiped across my entire existence. All my old sorrows sink into me when I remember it, though now I’m struck by terror as well. Terror that I’ll find nothing to persuade the jurors in my own defence. That I might meet the same fate as Phibbah. And that I might deserve it, if I do.

Chapter Six

Some of the anti-slavers visit me here, seeing what stories they can harvest out of me for their pamphlets. What makes them imagine I’d agree? They’d only make it into one of those slave tales. It doesn’t cross their minds that I might want to write it myself. Mr Feelon was the last to try it. It was hard enough having him here. He was there that terrible, murderous night, and I don’t like to be reminded of any part of it. I gave him my answer even before he had time to ask. ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I think I’d much prefer the rope.’

His lips swam away from each other. ‘You must suit yourself, of course, Miss Langton. But bear in mind that if you choose to write it yourself it will be necessary to season it. Your readers will need to understand. Show them why you had no choice.’

I showed him a raised brow. ‘If people don’t know already what happens on a West India estate, Mr Feelon, you’ve wasted your life in the printing of all those pamphlets.’

‘But the slave tales we print shed light on suffering,’ he said, his own face running oil, like a lamp. ‘Which is the only way to keep attention on our cause.’

All those good-doers, sniffing at the carcass of slavery, craving always to hear the worst thing. The worst thing isn’t that it strips the world to scraps and forces you to fight for them; the worst thing is that one of those scraps is yourself.

Mr Feelon’s visit, and his talk of suffering, brought Phibbah to mind ‒ though in truth I’m always thinking of her. It set me wondering how I could write about what happened so you could understand. I can tell you I loved her, and that she was all I had. I was all she had. I never wanted to hurt her. That was the least of my intentions. I had no intentions ‒ there’s no other way I can think to explain it. There was nothing in my mind but that black terror. That quailing. That awful, shrinking, grasping, shaming need. To save myself.