Yes, an ordinary stumble would have been a mortification, a dreadful misfortune. What did happen was about a million times as bad. Everything seemed to move very slowly, as it does in some of the worst nightmares. Frederick's foot met the floorboard. He thought it would keep sliding ahead, but it suddenly couldn't. The rest of his body could… and did.

Of itself, his torso bent forward. He tried to straighten-too late. The heavy tray lurched forward on his shoulder. He tried to steady it with his left hand. He couldn't. He grabbed for it with his right hand. Too late. Instead of the edge of the tray, which might have saved things, his hand hit the bottom. That made matters worse, not better.

A back pillar on Mistress Clotilde's chair caught him in the pit of the stomach. "Oof!" he said as the breath hissed out of him. And he could only watch as the tray crowded with bowls of soup flew out of his hands and fell toward the fancy lace tablecloth that had been in Clotilde's family for generations-as she would tell people at any excuse or none.

It seemed to take a very long time.

It seemed to, but it didn't. Frederick hadn't even managed to grab at his own abused midsection before the tray crashed down. Bowls full of hot soup went every which way. A few of them flew truly amazing distances. Frederick was amazed, all right. Appalled, too. Some soup bowls smashed. Others landed upside down but intact in well-to-do ladies' laps-or, in one disastrous case, in a busty lady's bodice-thereby delivering their last full measure of savory liquid devotion.

Dripping women shrieked. They sprang to their feet. They ran here, there, and everywhere. Some of them ran into others, which sent fresh screams echoing off the ceiling. Others swore, at the world in general or at Frederick in particular. He'd heard angry slaves cuss. He'd heard white muleskinners and overseers, too. For sheer, concentrated vitriol, he'd never heard anything like Clotilde Barford's guests.