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she had felt the two of them one with each other and with nature. And although he did not answer, she had known that as of this night, his marriage was over, his wife a mere phantom, not yet aware that she was dead to him.
    Her mother had been appalled to find the muddy nightgown crumpled beneath her bed. Her baby, child of a slave and the pride of her race, a candidate for college at the age of fifteen, turned so suddenly into the brazen wench of a drunken field laborer! After weeks of disapproval and consternation, the distraught mother had finally been reduced to begging: What about her writing? What about her scholarship to Bennett, the Methodist school for Negroes, soon to open at Greensboro? But the girl had found her life’s vocation: the pursuit and keeping of the man who had brought life to her life, that previously missing and masculine mystique, embodied in this bumbling man-boy, worldly but lost, heroic and precious to her. She would care for and live only for him.
    Before Prince could fully comprehend the extent of her preoccupation and delusion, she had declined the proffered and much-celebrated scholarship to take a job as dishwasher in a barroom. He heard of this by chance at a roadhouse near Fishing Creek: The estimable seamstress, proud freewoman and widow of a slave, had put her only child—a student of considerable talent, with a scholarship!—“outdoors” for philandering with a married man. Smart girl, right smart you know, but forward and never quite right in the head. Um, um, um! You don’t say!
    Prince had tried to discourage her. Sober and apologetic, he had encouraged Queen Marie to continue her schooling, make amends with her mother, and find herself a nice boy. She had responded with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, threatening starvation, self-mutilation, and suicide. Confused and frightened by her ardor, Prince had finally withdrawn, only to find her waiting for him one night outside the roadhouse near Fishing Creek, bleeding from her wrists and begging him to give her reason to live. This stratagem worked beautifully: He was bound to her by guilt and obligation. She was pleased to have secured his attention, no matter how ill-obtained.
    For Queen Marie had discovered early on that, despite the accolades of her teachers, and the envy of her peers, in her world of women so recently liberated from the fetters of forced whoredom to the men of two races, the necessity of male patronage was obsolete in theory only, not in fact, outweighing in importance all other considerations.
    And if she did nothing else in her misspent life, she would have this man. Questions of right and wrong and sin and morality became abstractions to her—interesting from a philosophical standpoint but irrelevant. She would have this man at any cost.

chapter 2
    LICKSKILLET, NORTH CAROLINA
    AUGUST, 1874
    And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I
cannot tell: God knoweth); How that he was caught up into
paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a
man to utter.
    —II Corinthians 12:3, 4
    Sister saw the woman again on countless occasions. Bits and pieces of the woman’s life fascinated and repelled her. Often, Sister’s children found her sitting in the yard, tears filling her eyes, and thought she cried for Daddy. Sister’s small daughter—Lilly was her name—kindhearted and always full of compassion, put her arms around her mother’s neck, whispering the words of comfort that her mother had taught her, and that had often stemmed her own tears.
    “Sh-sh-sh, Mama. It’s awright. It’s awright.”
    The boy—Prince Junior—looked away.
    For days, it seemed to Sister, the mysterious woman remained locked in the barn; bloodying her own hands while beating the doors or walls; demanding, screaming, and finally begging to be released. At other times, she yanked at her own short hair, screaming her frustration; or walked the perimeter of the small barn muttering