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know how to eat with my hands, Governor.”
    He speared fish into her hands, and she tossed the crumbling, hot pieces back and forth until they were cool enough to eat, shared them with Hyacinthe and Thérèse. Night had fallen, like a cloak, over them. Juice dribbled down her chin as she ate. No supper in a royal drawing room had ever tasted as good as this supper on a creek, she thought, remembering suppers as a girl, with Harry and Jane—those suppers, too, in the woods, with only a fire; those suppers, too, delicious and satisfying.
    Her dogs whined and cried and did flips in the air as Hyacinthe threw them scraps.
    “Where are the slaves, Governor?” asked Barbara.
    “At the galley. They have their own fire, their own supper.”
    Spotswood produced a bottle of wine from his baggage, opened it and presented it, with a flourish, to Barbara.
    “To the storm,” she said. “To survival.”
    One after the other they drank from it.
    “You are a man after my grandmother’s heart,” said Barbara, “prepared for anything.” She saw that these words pleased him. “My grandmother dislikes disorder, will not have it.”
    There was a rhythm and a sense of purpose to her grandmother’s life, comforting, like this fire. Order holds back chaos, thought Barbara, the way fire holds back dark.
    The sky blazed with stars, like hundreds of diamonds sparkling and white, laid out on a black velvet gown. Everywhere were the sounds of night: crickets, frogs, water lapping, small rustles in the underbrush. There was a far-off howl, like a dog’s, but not a dog’s. Her pugs, in her lap now, lifted their heads. The short fur on the back of their necks rose.
    “Wolves,” Spotswood said.
    Thérèse, who was sitting near the fire with them, bare toes peeking out from her gown as she wiggled them in sand, looked up. She was French and had lived on a farm; stories of wolves, slavering monsters who ate children alive, were something she had ingested as regularly as black bread and sour wine.
    “No danger,” said Spotswood. “It is only in winter that they might be hungry enough to attack.”
    Thérèse made a face as if to say, See, what a barbarous place. Barbara smiled. Hyacinthe was playing with a turtle he had found along the bank. She called his name, patting the sand near her; he left his turtle, curled himself against her stretched-out leg like a small animal, and was instantly asleep, as she’d known he would be.
    One of her dogs, the male one, named Harry after her brother, jumped from her lap and trotted away, but she did not call him. Thérèse was in the shelter now, rummaging through her portmanteau, an ancient, faded bag of leather, setting it to rights. Order out of chaos, thought Barbara. Doubtless she was also searching for a charm against wolves. Spotswood stretched out on the sand to smoke a long Dutch pipe of tobacco. Barbara heard her dog barking.
    “Perhaps he has found the cow,” said Barbara. She’d rather not write to her grandmother that she’d lost the cow. The chickens lost would be bad enough.
    “I sent two slaves off to search for your cow. They have not returned. They have more than likely run away. Some slaves try it over and over again. If they make it to the mountains, the Seneca—a fierce Indian tribe—find them and bring them back. If they can get to Carolina, to the south of us, they live there among the runaway indentured servants. I have asked the Board of Trade in England to limit the number of slaves allowed here, but they do nothing. We need another import duty to stop their coming. There are too many of them here…. If they were to all rise up…”
    He did not finish. Barbara was silent, trying to put straight in her mind the sight of those silent rowers today, the sight of all the dark faces she had seen since her arrival, cooking, cleaning, weeding gardens, repairing fences, carrying water, with rebellion and fear, but she could not.
    “What will happen to the slaves when you find