"Would you do it?" he asked. "Spy on a man's slaves for him?"

"I don't think that I could." A line of men and women passed close to the half-empty arcade, through the chaos of hogs and cotton bales and sacks on the levee, to the gangplank of the Bonnets o' Blue. Shackled together, the slaves were bound for one of the new cotton plantations in the Missouri territory, each clutching a few small possessions done up in a bandanna.

Afternoon sun sparkled on the water, but the wind that tore at their clothing and at the flags of the riverboat jackstaffs was sharp. One woman wept bitterly. Rose turned her head to watch them, her delicate mouth somber.

"My mother was a free woman," she said. "I was never a slave. I don't think I could pass myself off as one, because I don't know all those little things, the things you learn as a child. If someone wronged me I'd go to the master, which I gather isn't done..."

"Good God, no! " January was shocked to his soul that she'd even suggest it.

Rose spread her hands. "I've never been that dependent on someone's whim," she said. Her voice was a low alto-like polished wood rather than silver-and, like Fourchet, she had the speech of an educated Creole, not the French of France. "Not even my father's. And it does something to you, when you're raised that way. When I lived on my father's plantation, after Mother's death, my friend Cora-the maid's daughter-taught me a lot, but just being told isn't the same. I think that's why Lieutenant Shaw directed Monsieur Fourchet to you."

Savagely, January muttered, "I can't tell you how honored I feel."

"But as to whether I would spy, if I could... Somebody did murder the poor butler, Ben. That the poison was meant for the master doesn't make the servant less dead."