Heartfire

More and more people were seeing the waves now, and those near the water began to run farther inland. The waves were coming up onto the streets, forming rivers that flowed over the cobblestones. Farther inland the water came until it was streaming across the peninsula. Ships battered against the dock and began to break into kindling. People ran screaming through the streets, pounding on doors, begging to be let inside.

And the slaves also pounded on the doors. Where a moment before all they could think of was murder and vengeance, now in their groundfloor quarters a new passion had taken hold: to get to the first floor before this flood drowned them. Wave after wave swept through the slave quarters. The howling and singing stopped, to be replaced by a cacophony of panicked cries.

Many of the Whites, seeing the flood, opened the doors and let their slaves, now chastened and afraid, come up to safety. Others, though, kept the doors locked, and more than one discharged a weapon through the door, warning the slaves to stay back.

There were no more thoughts of killing the White families they worked for. Already the slaves were telling the stories that made sense to them. “God be telling us, Thou shalt not kill, or I send a flood like Noah!” “Lord, I don't want to die!” Terror took the place of rage, damped it down, swept it out, drowned it, for the moment, at least.

“Enough,” said Margaret. “You did it, Calvin. Enough.”

Calvin sobbed in relief. “That was so hard!” He lay back down, rolled over, curled up and wept. Or rather, tried to curl up. As he dragged his legs across the floor, his right foot was pulled away from his body. Margaret gagged at the sight. But Denmark's woman reached down, picked up the foot, and put it in place at the end of the damaged leg.

“He just about dead,” said Denmark.

“No,” moaned Margaret. “Oh, Calvin, not now, not when you finally did something good.”

“That the best time a-die,” said Fishy helpfully. “You get in heaven.”

Margaret turned again to Gullah Joe.

“No look me, you!” he said. “I do all you say, look what happen!”

“What if he sent out his doodlebug again? Like before? Even if he dies, can't you hold on to it? Keep it from getting away?”

“What you think I be? I a witchy man! You want God, him!”

“You held him captive before. Do it again! Try it!”

Even as she insisted, she could see the paths of the future change. When she finally saw one in which Calvin was still alive at dawn, she shouted at him, “That's it! Do that!”

“Do what?”

“What you were thinking! Right when I shouted.”

Gullah Joe threw up his hands in despair, but he set to work, making Denmark and Fishy help him, moving charms into a new circle, then putting an open box in the midst of it. “Tell him go in box. Put him whole self in box.”

“Did you understand him, Calvin?”

Calvin moaned in pain.

“Send out your doodlebug! Let him catch it and save it. It's your only chance, Calvin! Send your doodlebug to Gullah Joe, go into the box he's holding. Do it, Calvin!”

Panting shallowly, Calvin complied as best he could. Gullah Joe kept tossing a fine powder into the circle. It wasn't till the tenth throw that he shouted. “You see that? Part him go in! Look a-that!”

Another cast of the powder, and this time Margaret also saw the spark.

“All bright him! Inside, go all inside!”

“Do it, Calvin. Your whole attention, put it inside that box. Everything that's you, into the box!”

He stopped moaning. He rolled onto his back, his eyes staring straight up.

“He's done all he can do!” cried Margaret. “He's exhausted.”

“He dead,” said Fishy.

Gullah Joe slammed the lid on the box, turned it upside down, and sat on it.

“You hatching that?” asked Fishy.

“Inside circle, inside my hair.” Gullah Joe gri

“All right, Alvin,” Margaret murmured. “Come quickly.”

She leaned back against Denmark's wife, who knelt behind her like a cushion. “I'm so tired,” she said.

“We all sleep now,” said Denmark.

“Not me,” said Gullah Joe.

Margaret closed her eyes and looked out into the city again. The water was calm again and the panic had died down, but the revolt was over for the night. Killing had been driven out of the hearts of the Blacks.

But now the thought of killing was showing up in other hearts. Whites were rushing to the palace, demanding that someone find out who started the plot. It had to be a plot, all the slaves starting up at once. Only the miraculous intervention of the waves had saved them. Do something, they demanded. Catch the ringleaders of the revolt.

And King Arthur listened. He called in his advisers and listened to them. Soon there were questioners in the streets, directing groups of soldiers as they gathered Blacks for questioning.

How long? thought Margaret. How long before Denmark Vesey's name comes up?

Long before dawn.

Margaret rose to her feet. “No time for rest now,” she said. “Alvin will come here. Tell him what you've done. Don't harm Calvin's body in any way. Keep it as fresh as you can.”

Gullah Joe rolled his eyes. “Where you go?”

“It's time for my audience with the King.”

Lady Ashworth spent the entire rebellion throwing up in her bedroom. The flood, too. For her husband had found out about her liaison with that boy– slaves who had once been docile now suddenly seemed to take relish in sowing dissension between her and Lord Ashworth. In vain did she plead that it was only once, in vain did she beg for forgiveness. For an hour she sat in the parlor, trembling and weeping, as her husband brandished a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other, one of which he would set down from time to time in order to take another swig of bourbon.

It was only the howling of the slaves that broke off his drunken, murderous, suicidal ranting. This was one house where none of the Blacks wanted to brave a crazed White man with a gun, but he was all for shooting them anyway if they didn't shut up and stop all that chanting and moaning. As soon as he left her alone, Lady Ashworth fled to her room and locked the door. She threw up so abruptly that she didn't have time to move first– her vomit was a smear down the door and onto the floor beneath it. By the time the flood came she had nothing left to throw up, but she kept retching.

With the Blacks terrified and Lady Ashworth indisposed, the only person able to answer Margaret's insistent ringing at the door was Lord Ashworth himself, who stood there drunken and disheveled, the pistol still in his hand, hanging by the trigger. Margaret immediately reached down and took the gun away from him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “That's my gun. Who are you?”

Margaret took in the situation with a few probes into his heartfire. “You poor stupid man,” she said. “Your wife wasn't seduced. She was raped.”

“Then why didn't she say so?”

“Because she thought it was a seduction.”

“What do you know about any of this?”

“Take me to your wife at once, sir!”

“Get out of my house!”

“Very well,” said Margaret. “You leave me no choice. I will be forced to report to the press that a trusted officer of the King has had a liaison for the past two years with the wife of a certain plantation owner in Sava

He backed away from her, raising his hand to point the gun at her, until he remembered that she had his pistol. “Who sent you?” he said.

“I sent myself,” she said. “I have urgent business with the King. Your wife is in no condition to take me. So you'll have to do it.”