We latched hands, and I kept my eyes down, watched their feet, copied what they did. It was some English music the rest of them knew, and they stepped together, touched hands, made bow, then curtsy, then bow, like they were speaking some language I didn’t understand, and left me always stumbling two steps behind.

Linux sat tall and straight, flicking her eyes over each of us in turn. Now and then she took small, sucking sips from her glass, twisting her face like a squeezed-out rag. Not even that could dampen my mood. I felt my ribs swelling as if they’d split my chest. Music spilled around us, and the floor was loud under our feet, and we laughed and danced. The four of us forgot ourselves, if only for that hour. No one at Paradise had spoken to me much, let alone asked me to dance. So that was a measure of happiness, being part of their dancing. Forgetting time, forgetting the house, empty and silent above us ‒ forgetting all notions of who we were supposed to be to each other. Four people, dancing.

Langton once told me that when the English soldiers rounded up the obeah men in Jamaica, after Tacky’s rebellion, they experimented on them. Tied them with shackles, prodded them with electric machines and magic lanterns, gave them all manner of jolts and shocks. It must have felt like thunder going through their bones, or pops of lightning cleaving their skulls. When they could no longer stand it, they were forced to admit that the white man’s magic was stronger. The white man is the measure of all things, and of all things the measure is the white man.

That was how I felt when we latched arms.

Oh.

No matter what any moment holds, memory makes of it either nothing at all, or unending terror, or ceaseless grief. All I have left of that night are flashes of her diamond ear-bobs, the swells of her moving against me like tides, the feel of her, like a taste I couldn’t get out of my mouth.

Chapter Fifteen

English winter is a season of dying things, of long waiting, and wool-thick skies. Underfoot the crunch of gravel, the wet slip of frost turning to mud, a meshwork of rotting leaves and damp grass. It was into such an afternoon that Pru and I were sent out the following day.

Linux had found us at the table, cutting old sheets into tinder to fill the boxes. Madame had flown the coop, she said, tucking chin to neck, like a skewer to a joint of pork. She was likely in the park, and we were to go down ourselves, the pair of us, and see if we could fetch her back in time for Lady Catherine’s morning call.

Pru said we should go our separate ways, for many hands made light work, so we separated when we came to a fork in the path. As soon as I was away from her I quickened my feet, heart keeping pace. The park that day was a stew of carriages and foot passengers, boiling in the fog. I soon came to a quieter part of it, a small garden leading down to a stand of elms, where mist hung white as milk, the air as clouded as my thoughts. Winter showed on the trees also, rough peeling aprons of black bark, and curling moss. After I came to the end of the path there, I saw her ahead. Wearing her black spencer, skirts flaring red beneath it, head tilted, dark hair swinging below her waist, hands gripped behind her. Something about her called to mind the image of a bird beating against glass.