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Roger’s favorite poet. Tell me where all past years are, / Or who cleft the Devil’s foot. Tell me, God, she thought, where Roger went, or how to live without him.
    The wind came through the trees, rubbing branches together, making them creak and moan and cry, like grieving women. The slave piped his sweet song. His friends listened gravely. There were twigs and sticks in their braids, and scars upon their faces, scars that looked as if they had been deliberately made. When? By whom? thought Barbara.
    How beautiful this night, this fire, these men with their scarred faces and twisted hair were; so beautiful, hurt was almost eased. This place was tamed only in places. Savage, as Thérèse said, dangerous, barbarous. Good. It suited her heart.
    Tobacco. Barbara thought of the Governor’s words this evening, of the words she’d heard from those who came to visit in Williamsburg. They’d been talking tobacco, too. It was this colony’s most important crop.
    When I grow it, thought Barbara, it will have to be the best.

 

    Chapter Two

    I T WAS THE FOLLOWING NIGHT ON THE PLANTATION OF F IRST Curle, and six slaves gathered at the small kitchen building, settled back on their heels, and at long last, ate. They had been in the fields until past dark. Tobacco leaves were being harvested. It was nothing but labor for the slaves until the leaves were casked in the big barrels called hogsheads, until winter came and its cold gave them respite from the tobacco plant everyone grew here.
    Light came from the kitchen’s fire, a glow they could see reflected through the kitchen’s opened door. The oldest of them by many years sat on the steps. With reverence, the other slaves called her Old Grandmother. She was cook, now that she was too old for the fields. She looked like something carved from petrified wood, all hollows, wrinkles, bone, her hair a thin, white, grizzled halo on her skull, her legs brittle twigs.
    Squatting down before the others, his fingers dipping into their communal bowl of cornmeal and hog’s meat, one of the slaves told of the new mistress who had come to them this day. She was young. The slave, always a wit, pointed to the youngest slave among them, a girl. Not that young. He pointed to Old Grandmother. Not that old. She came with another woman—a servant—and a boy, a slave like them, but not like them either. The Governor’s galley slaves, who ate with the plantation slaves, agreed.
    He has fine clothes, said the witty one, the teller of this story. Soft clothes. His voice in the darkness conveyed those clothes Hyacinthe wore, warm and whole, a master’s clothes on a boy like them. He described the shine of the buckles on the boy’s shoes, the sweep of the feather in his hat, the glow of the silver collar around his neck.
    There were two dogs, also—such dogs! Never had he seen such dogs. Uglier than the overseer—a comment that was much enjoyed. The teller of tales went to the steps, where the glow from the kitchen’s fire made a backdrop for him, bulged out his eyes to show the way those dogs’ eyes bulged, curved out his arms to show the way their legs bowed out. He stooped over and held his hand over the step to show how small they were. And so worthless, so useless, they had not even smelled him when he’d peered in the window of the house earlier to see what there was to be seen.
    “Overseer.”
    The word dropped into their eating, their talking, like a stone into water, and they became mute. The only sounds now were the wind in the trees, and fingers scraping the wooden bowl.
    Odell Smith, the head overseer of First Curle, walked up. He had been making the rounds, locking the basement, the corn house, the smokehouse, the barn, upset by this day, upset by the arrival of Barbara and her entourage.
    “Finish eating,” he ordered them, roughly. “There’s work tomorrow. Much work. We have to get the leaves in the tobacco barns. You all know that. Sinsin, take the galley slaves with you to