They had to know, thought January, looking at the kitchen maid Kitta, the watchful-eyed little Dan bringing still more champagne glasses and yellow-flowered plates back from the house. He saw how they smiled at one another and how the little man relaxed when the woman touched his hand.

Which of them, he wondered, had sent for the voodoo-man?

Or woman.

January glanced down at Gabriel and saw the shaky relief in the boy's smile. Of course he wouldn't have told these people about sickness, if it was the cholera. That was a good way to get a thrashing from a man like the Colonel, freeborn or not. How dare you go around scaring my servants with your lies? Most Americans didn't understand the difference between free coloreds and black slaves.

"Thank you for looking after him," January said. "We'll be bidding you good night." He put a hand on Gabriel's shoulder and guided him from the kitchen and into the shadows of the yard.

Behind them Aeneas called out, "You mind how you go.

That'll be all we need, thought January. Some officious member of the City Guard demanding to see our papers. 'Are you aware that it's two in the morning? That the cannon in the Place d'Armes fired off at ten to warn people like you"-meaning both blacks and colored-"to be off the street?"

He glanced back at the kitchen. The other musicians had already gone. By the grubby topaz glow of a dozen smoky tallow candles, the cook, the menservants, and the kitchen maid Kitta had recommenced the Augean task of washing every dish, fork, and sparkling bit of hollowware.

Little Dan carried a yoke of pails to the cistern; firelight leapt over Aeneas's sweaty face as he fanned up the flames under the boiler to heat it. In the ballroom's four long windows the white beauty of the gaslight dimmed and disappeared. Carriage wheels creaked and slopped in the muddy street, and voices called a final good-bye: French. The Americans had left a full thirty minutes ago. A moment later Mrs. Pritchard emerged from the rear door of the house, carrying a candlestick; she murmured, "Soir" to January and Gabriel as they passed from the kitchen's lights into the dark side yard that led around to the stilldeeper darkness of the street.