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  “And I could not go,” she said simply. “Look again. Look at me. Look into me.”

  Mehuru leaned forward and took her in—the blank, strange shapes of her masked face, the hunched shoulders of a woman in deep pain, the shapeless clothes that hid her round, smooth breasts and the pure line of her hips, and then he leaned a little closer, sensing the start of new life. He sighed a small, hidden breath. He could see Sir Charles’s baby.

  The woman nodded, but Mehuru did not let the sense of the embryo slide away from him. There was something wrong. He breathed a little deeper; if he had the smoke, if he had the water, if he had the polished tray and the cowrie shells for the complicated arithmetical divination, he would have been able to know what was wrong.

  “The baby,” he said. “I think it is sick.”

  “The man was diseased,” she answered. “He was thick with illness; he smelled foul, like death.”

  Mehuru nodded. The baby would not go full term; he would not be taking a viable life when he wished the woman dead with a baby inside her. And Died of Shame did not have a life worth living now.

  “Can you wish me dead?” she asked. “Without pain, but quickly?”

  Mehuru waited for guidance, closing his eyes. Patiently, the woman sat beside him, watching his face. They were silent together for nearly an hour, until Mehuru hissed a long, slow hiss. “Yes.”

  “The goddess will not eat you,” she said generously, freeing him of any guilt, absolving him of blame so that Ayelala, the goddess who punishes lawbreakers, would not come for him.

  “Or you.” Mehuru returned the blessing.

  He took one last look at her before she went back to her place beside the other women and lay down. He saw that his wishing would only complement her own desire. Her eyes were already dead, as dull as the metal plate across her mouth.

  He heard her moving softly in the darkness, lying down and wrapping her arms around herself. He heard her muffled lips name the people she loved—her little son, her husband, her mother—and then the ancestors who might come to her, who might, despite all that was wrong in her life, forgive her. And then he heard the long, long silence of a woman waiting for death.

  Mehuru sat up and stared into the darkness and started the wishing.

  IN THE MORNING IN THE darkness of the cave, he heard the women stirring and then an abrupt exclamation. “Aiee! She is dead.”

  “Mehuru! Did you know? Died of Shame is dead!”

  He rose to his feet and staggered a little from the stiffness in his legs. “I knew,” he said.

  Kbara, chained to the wall at the other end of the line, was awake. “What shall we do? She needs to be buried here.”

  One woman pushed back the straw and tapped on the cave floor. It was sandstone. “Do they have no earth in this damned country?” she asked. “How are we to bury our sister where she should be buried, under the floor of her own hut?”

  “She knew,” Mehuru told them. “She was prepared for it to be done wrongly.”

  The woman who named herself Grief drew a little closer to him. “She spoke to you?”

  Mehuru said nothing.

  “So how will we manage?” Kbara demanded. “Shall we shout out for them?”

  “Don’t make them bring the whip,” the girl called Homeless said hastily. “When we shout, they bring the whip.”

  “We’ll sing to her very quietly,” Grief decided. “And make her ready as much as we can. Then Mehuru can tell them. Mehuru, you will ask for Frances and tell her.”

  He nodded. It was a relief to see a woman taking command. They knew what they should do; it was their business. They gathered around her. He heard their soft lament, a whispered song, and he heard the shuffle of their feet in the straw as they moved, straightening her torn clothes and washing the parts of her face they could reach around the metal bridle.

  “It is not right!” the girl called Lost cried despairingly. “How can we do it right here?”

  Kbara, Mehuru, and the older boy, Accursed, stood uneasily waiting. They should have been digging the grave for the woman, inside the door of the hut, at her own hearthside so that she might always be with her family. They should have been walking to outlying houses to tell them of the death. They should have been making a gift or doing some task for the bereaved family. They should have been helping to prepare a feast to say farewell, they should have been priming their guns to celebrate her passing with gunshots, they should have been practicing their steps and preparing the grim masks to dance for her funeral. There was so much to do when there was a death, especially that of a young woman. And now they stood around like fools, like idle fools.

  The opening of the door was a relief. John Bates came in, carrying a big pan of porridge. He recoiled as Mehuru went to the length of his chain to greet him.

  “Now then, now then,” he said nervously. “Shush, shush, shush, stay quiet.”

  “Frances,” Mehuru said quietly. “See . . . Frances.”

  John Bates nearly dropped the pan in amazement.

  “Johnbates,” Mehuru said gently. “I . . . want . . . Frances.”

  “My God, he’s talking,” John exclaimed. “He said my name!” He turned his head and yelled up the stairs. “The darkie’s talking. The big one! He’s talking words!”

  Cook appeared at the top of the steps. “If you’ve finished, I’ll shut this door,” she said crossly. “I won’t have it open all day. Shall I shut you in?”

  “Wait a minute, if you please.” He thrust the bowl into Mehuru’s arms.

  “See Frances,” Mehuru repeated.

  “Frances.” The driver nodded. “Mrs. Cole. But I know what you mean. I’ll tell her.” He opened his mouth and suddenly shouted very loudly. Spittle flew from his red lips into the porridge; Mehuru could feel it on his face. “I’ll tell her!”

  He turned and went back up the stairs. “Remarkable,” he said as he closed the door and went into the kitchen. “Here, Mrs. Brown, tell Mrs. Cole that the big nigger is asking for her. He’s never done that before. He said her name.”

  Brown sniffed disapprovingly. “She’s not even awake yet,” she snorted. She was laying the tray with Frances’s drink of hot chocolate and a bread roll with fresh-churned butter and plum jam.

  “Well, tell her when you bring her breakfast in,” Bates said. “She’ll want to know. She takes a deal of trouble over them.”

  Brown picked up the tray without answering and swept from the kitchen. But by the time she had woken Frances, drawn her curtains, and set her tray before her on the bed, she knew that Bates was right.

  “The big slave was asking for you,” she said.

  Frances paused with the cup halfway to her lips. “He asked for me?”

  “He said, ‘see Frances,’ according to John Bates. I said I’d tell you. I hope I did right.”

  “Yes, of course,” Frances said. “I’d better see him at once.”

  “You’ll have your chocolate first?”

  Frances pushed the tray to one side and got out of bed. “No, you can make me some more later.” She was now accustomed to ordering what she wanted. “Fetch me a wrapper and tie back my hair. I’ll see him now. Is Mr. Cole at home?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s gone out. He went over on the ferry to see Sir Charles Fairley at his hotel.”

  “Then I’ll come down in my wrapper.”

  Frances brushed her own hair, scrupulously pinned her cap, and tied her loose gown. “Tell Cook I’m on my way,” Frances said, mindful of the protocol of Cook’s kitchen.

  There was a stony silence as she went into the kitchen, but John was waiting by the cellar door. “He said your name, Mrs. Cole, clear as a bell. Shall I come down with you? Shall I bring my whip?”

  Frances was about to refuse, but then she hesitated.

  “You don’t know what he’s doing,” John warned. “It could be a trap, ma’am. I’ll fetch my pistols as well before you go down.”

  An old, dark fear touched Frances. The fear of a woman o