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Hammond’s motive in going to the kitchen was as much to get away from Brownlee’s conversation as to succour Lucretia Borgia. He had endured about all of Brownlee that he was able, but he was about to return to the sitting-room when out of the black night there emerged an even blacker apparition in the person of Belshazzar, the son of Black Lucy.

‘Miz Lucretia Borgia,’ he blurted, ‘my mammy say tell Masta Big Pearl sick. She awful sick.’

Belshazzar addressed himself directly to the cook, ignoring the master.

‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’ Hammond demanded with an unintentional gruffness which paralysed the child into dumbness.

Hammond grasped Belshazzar’s shoulder and repeated his question, ‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’

Big Pearl was the very gem of Falconhurst. Tawny as burnished copper, strong as a block and tackle, straight as a beam, and barely nubile, Big Pearl was as magnificent a pure Mandingo as had ever wielded a cotton hoe. She was elephantine equally in her proportions and in the grace with which she progressed. She did not walk or run or amble—Big Pearl progressed. She was the plantation show-piece, docile as a kitten, biddable as putty. She delighted in being stripped and paraded and handled and bargained for, confident that the tremendous offers for her would be declined. She had never known an ill day in her life. To Hammond the heavens seemed to have fallen.

‘Whut ail Big Pearl?’ he asked a third time.

Belshazzar, frightened into dumbness was re-frightened into speech. ‘Me? I don’t know, ’um. Big Pearl got a misery.’

Hammond, shuffling in his carpet slippers and limping on his stiffened knee, strode off across the blackness to Lucy’s cabin. He walked so fast that Belshazzar had to break into an occasional run to keep up with him. The nearness of his master protected him from the dark.

Hammond heard the girl’s groans, pierced at intervals by a wailing scream. He pushed open the cabin door. All was in confusion. Children cowered in fright against the walls in the background. Flames roared in the fireplace. Lucy bent, solicitous but in helpless despair, above the bed where her daughter Big Pearl threshed in her agony, making the cold night hideous with her cries.

Hammond was moved to compassion. He approached the bed, pushed the towering Lucy aside and, sitting down beside the girl, took her hand in his. ‘Big Pearl, whut’s the matter? Whut ail you?’

‘I got a misery, Master Ham, I got a misery in my belly, Masta—but it better now.’ The moaning ceased and Big Pearl lay calm. ‘It better now,’ she repeated weakly.

Hammond returned to the house and, sinking into a chair, ordered Memnon to fetch him a toddy. His apparent fatigue and anxiety caused his father to voice his solicitude.

‘I’s all right,’ Hammond replied, not very convincingly.

‘How Big Pearl? Whut ails her?’ Maxwell inquired impatiently.

‘Big Pearl better now, I reckon. Guess it weren’t more than the belly-ache. Worst over, time I got there,’ the youth explained. ‘I poured her out a big dose of castor oil and give her a little laudanum. Reckoned that the bes’ thing.’

‘Sure is,’ Maxwell affirmed.

‘Then I called Lancelot and had him tote Big Pearl down to the old pest house on his back. Big as that boy is, all he could do to tote that young wench. Don’t think it’s nothin’ but too much hog meat from that fresh killin’, but don’t want to take a chance on no catchin’ epizootic with a plantation full of young niggers.’

‘You don right, Ham. Got gumption, you has,’ Maxwell said approvingly. ‘I ain’t heard of nothing goin’ around, but the pox or the vomit would clean us right out. You done jest right.’

‘Good as I could. Had Lancelot make up a big fire in the pest house, and left him a-settin’ by it to watch her. If Big Pearl ain’t better by morning, I’ll put a boy on a mule and have him ride to the veterinary in Benson.’

‘ ’Tain’t safe, ’tain’t safe, I’m afeared, to leave that Lancelot boy with that wench all night. He mighty full-blooded and vig’ous. We doesn’t want no accidents of that kind with that choice wench.’

‘I warned him I’d hide him if he pestered her,’ said Hammond.

‘Virgin yet, ain’t she?’

‘I reckon so. I ain’t felt to see since last pickin’ time. Lucy pretty moral and she goin’ watch her.’

‘I don’t know whut’s the matter with you, Ham, lettin’ a nice smooth wench like Big Pearl go virgin so long—goin’ on fifteen years.’

‘Kinda shirkin’ your duty, ain’t you, son?’ interposed Brownlee, leering.

‘I done tol’ you at least fifty times,’ Hammond answered his father, ‘I cain’t stan’ the musk of a real nigger. The yaller onces is bad enough.’

‘Course, there’s one way to kill musk ever’ whit,’ said Brownlee, ‘good deal of trouble, but it kin be done.’

‘Whut way?’ inquired Hammond interestedly. ‘Rub ’em with some essence? That jest puts one stink on another and makes ’em worse.’

‘No; I mean soak ’em good, about five minutes, in ’manganate of potash water, not too strong, jest kind of red.’

‘Why, that’s that coarse powder-like stuff in that dusty bottle out in the medicine shelf. Never knew whut it was fer,’ said Hammond.

‘That’s whut it’s fer,’ declared Brownlee. ‘Everybody in New Orleans use it on they house niggers. A ’manganated wench will keep absolutely sweet two whole days; a buck begins to shed his musk agin after ’bout a day. I reckoned everybody knowed about that.’

‘Shore never heared on it,’ Maxwell said.

‘We’ll have to try it,’ Hammond resolved. ‘How much do you use?’

‘Jest enough to make the water red—not purple, and soak the nigger in it, head and all, all but his nose, about a good five minutes. One tub of ’manganate is enough fer a dozen or more niggers—no call to was’e it. But never don’t let it set to use over and over. It loses its stren’th in time.’

‘Shore gotten to try it,’ Maxwell said. ‘I don’t hold much with these new-fangled idees. But that cain’t do no harm. Think me to try it tomorrow, Ham.’

‘Papa sure don’t believe in new-fangled stuff,’ complained Ham. ‘Papa don’t want I should even go fer that new way of ploughin’ across the gullies instead of alongside ’em, that Mista Tom Jefferson up in Virginia wrote about. But I’m goin’ to do it, come plough time, anyhow.’

‘Too late, too late. Falconhurst is done fer cotton. If I had a-started earlier, when Mista Tom first talked about it, things might have been different. But it’s a lot of trouble, and too late anyway. Falconhurst does all right as is.’

‘Don’t git riled up so, Papa. It ain’t good fer your rheumatiz.’

‘Damn my rheumatiz! Don’t do this and don’t do that. It gits worser, whatever I do or quit doin’. Toddies do more fer it than anythin’, seems like. But tonight’s the worst it’s ever been.’

Ham shook his head in despair. ‘I only wishes you could git one of them nekid dogs the Mexicans got. They do say that sleepin’ with your feet agin one of them dogs dreens the rheumatiz right out of a man and into the dog.’

‘I’ve hearn about ’em, but I never seen one. I doubt that there really is sich a thing as a nekid dog.’

‘They is. They have ’em,’ Brownlee declared.

‘Must be right comical,’ conjectured Maxwell.

‘Course, any dog shaved down so that the feet kin git right agin its skin is jest as good—or a nigger. A nigger will dreen off the rheumatiz through the feet jest as good as any nekid dog.’

‘Do you reckon so?’

‘Shore do,’ Brownlee was confident. ‘Why, I knew a man name of Bronson over in Natchez that tried it. So cripped up he couldn’t hardly walk. He tried sleepin’ with his feet agin the belly of a nigger and in no time at all Bronson was a-walkin’ and a-straddlin’ his horse as good as ever. The old rheumatiz jest dreened right out’n him into the nigger. Nigger all cripped in no time, jest like Bronson was before.’

‘Might be worth tryin’,’ said Ham.

‘Might be,’ repeated Maxwell hopefully. ‘Get me a nigger, Hammond; I’ll begin this very night. Have him washed up good. A buck is better than a wench—a wench is sorta disturbin’ when you got the rheumatiz and cain’t do nothin’.’

‘We’ll use one of the twins, and I’ll give Lucretia Borgia some of that black powder to put in the wash water to kill the muskiness.’

‘Sort of hate to ruin one of them twins with rheumatiz,’ speculated Maxwell.

‘We kin dreen it right out of him into some other nigger if he gits too bad. He’s right here in the house and handy,’ Hammond said, rising to go to arouse Lucretia Borgia to give her instructions about the preparation of her son for his master’s use.

‘Course, you got to have the nigger sort of curl up around your feet, and you got to press hard and force the rheumatiz right out’n the soles,’ Brownlee counselled expertly.

Maxwell rubbed his knees and massaged one hand with the other. The pain subsided from time to time, but it never entirely left his joints. He had become so inured to its presence that when it was least he was unaware of it, until a sudden pang shot through the various parts of his body which forced him to restrain himself to keep from, crying out. ‘The worse of it is,’ he lamented. ‘Ham’s young—too young to tote the whole plantation on his shoulders. I got no mind to complain about the way he does—does right good; but at eighteen I was out and around, sowing my oats, and up to all kinds of devilment.’

‘A smart, sturdy boy like him. It won’t hurt him none to be nailed down for awhile,’ Brownlee hazarded. ‘I never got out to raise no hell. It never hurt me.’

‘He never even got no schoolin’ to speak of. His mamma learned him to read a little and I tried to after she died. She could read real good, better’n I kin. Then I sent him to the Institute over at Jackson fer a term three or four years ago, but couldn’t stand havin’ him away—wouldn’t let him go back. Always afraid somethin’ would happen to him—after that gelding pony, I was fool enough to put him on when he was little, threw him off and stiffened his knee. You cain’t never trust a gelding; give me a whole horse or none. Schoolin’ is a great thing fer a boy. He needs it—more and more as time goes on, more than in my day.’

‘Don’t know; don’t know. Sometimes schoolin’ ruints a boy—makes ’em big-headed,’ Brownlee opined. ‘Jest cain’t stand a big head. I didn’t never have no edication and didn’t never need none. Course, I had got to learn to cipher a little, and am right good at it now. But I never was ruint by book learnin’.’

Maxwell was still doubtful about the havoc wrought by education. ‘Guess Ham got enough to git along with, but I wish’t he had more of it. I wish’t I hadn’t been so hoggish fer him, a-holdin’ of him back.’

‘It sense that counts—not learnin’,’ Brownlee consoled. ‘And Hammond got sense.’

‘I helt him back that a-way, and I’m still a-holdin’ him back. Besides the plantation and two hundred niggers, he’s got me and my rheumatiz on his shoulders. Young as he is, I wonder if he wouldn’t be better off if I was dead. Of course, if my pains don’t better, I won’t last long, and I’d like to see him married off before I die—course to some nice, well-bred young lady—I want to see it. I want to see ’em breed another boy to take over Falconhurst when Ham gits the rheumatiz or whatever and to carry it along through the generations. Course, Falconhurst is played out fer cotton; but who needs cotton with niggers goin’ up and up?’

‘ ’Lessen them abolitionists at the North sets all the niggers free,’ Brownlee interposed, at once derisive and sceptical.

‘Triflin’ loafers, interferin’ in other folks’ business. Slavery was ordained by God, and there ain’t nothin’ they kin do about it except talk and stir up trouble between slavery territory and free territory, between South and North. Cain’t they understand that you got to have niggers to grow cotton, and you got to grow cotton to feed them Northern spindles? They tryin’ to ’bolish they own jobs and they own profits?’ Maxwell rose to his feet in the excitement of his own eloquence.

‘They dangerous, howsumever,’ said Brownlee. ‘Take them Quakers, and take that Garrison and that newspaper he started to print last year, that Liberator, as he calls it. Seen any o’ them papers?’

‘Don’t want to see none. To read about ’em in The New Orleans Advertiser turns me sick. Better not nobody fetch one of them Liberators to Falconhurst.’

‘Better not let the niggers see ’em, anyway. Puts idees in they heads,’ Brownlee warned.

‘My niggers cain’t read. Best law ever passed, that law agin learnin’ niggers to read.’

‘Some does it even agin the law,’ Brownlee said.

‘An’ they liable to have a risin’ to fight, too. No nigger readin’, no nigger risin’. Why, that Garrison hadn’t printed that Liberator of his six months when that nigger risin’ up in Virginia happened last year. Wonder they never could ketch that Nat Turner nigger.’

‘They ketched him. Didn’t you know? They ketched him and hung him along about harvest time.’

‘Hung him?’ Maxwell was incredulous.

‘Hung him.’

‘Jest hung him? Didn’t burn him or nothin’ after killin’ all them white folks? Had ought to of burned him. Ought to of made a sample of him.’

‘Had ought to have burned that Garrison at the same post and to stoked the fire with Liberators,’ Brownlee agreed. ‘Garrison jest set the nigger on. Strange you never hearn about it.’

‘I missed some New Orleans Advertisers around pickin’ time. Ham didn’t have no time to ride to Benson and the postmaster throwed ’em out. Reckoned we didn’t want ’em.’

‘All up and down the Seaboard, folks are still a-talkin’ about Nat Turner. They skeared of more risin’s. All through Virginia and the Carolinas, and ’specially Georgia.’

‘They don’t know nothin’ about how to treat niggers. Treat ’em right, feed ’em, don’ overwork ’em, and they don’t uprise. Owners too greedy to git work out’n ’em. A nigger responds to good treatment better’n a dog. I don’ have no trouble with mine, and Ham don’t.’

Hammond entered from the dining-room, guiding with hand on shoulder one of the Borgia’s twins. The boy had been roused from bed, bathed and soaked in a potassium permanganate solution, despite which he still was not fully awake. He was entirely naked and seemed unconcerned about the purpose of his arousal or the fate in store for him He had confidence in Hammond and feared no abuse.

‘Here’s your Mexican dog,’ Ham greeted his father. ‘Used that red stuff on him and there ain’t a trace of musk about him; smell like’n as if he was white.’

‘Come here, boy. Set and drink your toddy, Ham, ere it git cold.’ Maxwell sniffed at various parts of the boy and declared himself satisfied. ‘Must be strong medicine that kill nigger-stink like that. Smell of him, Mr. Brownlee,’ and he pushed the child toward the trader’s chair.

Brownlee in his turn sniffed and continued to sniff the boy all over, handling and embracing and patting him and clinging onto him, as if he doubted the efficacy of his own prescription. Brownlee too, at last, was convinced, but reluctant to surrender the young Negro servant. The Maxwells were insensible to Brownlee’s dalliance with the child, until, in the belief that the boy was lingering for attention and failing to note that the trader was grasping him, Hammond commanded the boy to be seated.

The chairs about the fireside were occupied and the boy retreated to one at the rear of the room and gingerly propped himself into it, unsure of what was expected of him.

‘Meg, whure your manners? You knows better than set in a chair,’ Hammond said sternly.

The boy immediately found his feet. ‘I ain’t Meg; I Alph.’

‘You Meg if’n I call you Meg. You knows who I means. You a nigger, and niggers sets on the floor in white folks’ houses.’

Hammond saw that the child intended no disrespect and changed his tone. ‘Come over here and set whure it wa’m,’ he half commanded, half invited, ‘there at one side of the hearth.’

The boy complied, squatting toad-fashion between his legs, comfortable and serene. He made an effort to listen to the conversation of the whites but couldn’t keep his eyes open. What he heard was neither interesting nor intelligible to him. He wondered what his masters drank that smelled so good. At length he toppled over upon his side, curled up, and slept warmly.

‘One more toddy, and we’ll all retire to bed,’ said Maxwell. ‘I crave to git me into bed with my feet agin his belly; crave to try it,’ whereupon he summoned Mem.

Memnon had been in and out of the sitting-room all the evening, renewing the fire, serving drinks, replacing candles. Unobtrusive and alert, he forgot nothing. He was bent upon proving that the whipping promised him for tomorrow was unnecessary. His imagination already felt the smart of his buttocks, and he pictured the contempt that the other Negroes would feel for him. His disgrace would be as poignant as the impact of the paddle.

‘Reckon I ought to go down to the pest house to see how Big Pearl come on afore I goes to retire?’ Hammond asked his father.

‘Let Big Pearl be. You weary, Ham. Night’s cole outdoors. Git yourself some sleep, and stop your frettin’ about all them niggers. You ain’t they mamma. You ain’t called to coddle and nurse ’em, the way you doin’. They all right. Let ’em alone.’

‘Howsumever, I ’sponsible fer ’em. I’m right fond of our niggers, and right proud of ’em. Every one of ’em sound as a hickory. And that Big Pearl—I’d sure grieve to lose her.’

‘Course, a good nigger is a right smart loss, these times and these prices. But why this here Pearl more than some othern?’

‘Whyn’t you show Big Pearl to Mista Brownlee, Papa?’

‘First place, she ain’t fer sale. Second place, she make other niggers look puny. Third place, it rainin’ and I didn’t want to shuck her down out in that rain and wind.’

‘Youen’s show nigger, eh?’

‘Mandingo, pure Mandingo,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Don’t find many Mandingos pure no more.’

‘I likes ’em black,’ Brownlee declared.

‘Me? I likes ’em lusty, whutever they colour. Course, it all right fer white men to pester black wenches—a protection to white womanhood, I always says. But everybody wantin’ yaller niggers; puny, frail, weak, white owners spends all they sap a-tryin’ to git light-coloured babies, that ain’t fitten to grow into strong cotton hands. They all dreams of gittin’ fancy yaller wenches that they kin sell young fer a monst’ous price. If they had a lookin’-glass they know they couldn’t sire nothin’ but ugly, knotty runts. Course, I ain’t meaning such owners as Ham, here, sturdy, and purty an’ vig’ous, but Ham ain’t runnin’ through the cabins a-coverin’ all the wenches a-tryin’ fer yeller offspring. No, suh.’

The personal aspect of his father’s conversation Hammond found embarrassing. He sought to turn it back into its channel. ‘You sayin’ about Mandingos, Papa,’ he began.

‘So I was, so I was. I was talkin’ about Big Pearl. I’ll come back to that,’ said Maxwell, refusing the interruption. ‘Ham ain’t got but two or three babies all told—but they all turned out little bucks. They fancy, light-yallers, all right, but all bucks. His oldest one—comin’ on four, now—is as healthy and purty and straight a saplin’ as ever I see. Course, it gits extrie feed and everythin’.’

‘Ham look like he be a right vigorous stud,’ said Brownlee.

‘Didn’t look fer that first one to amount to nothin’ at all with Hammond jest fourteen years old when he got it. Dropped the day after his fifteenth birthday. Proudest boy ever was; thought he was a man fer shore.’

‘You purty mad, I reckon, when you found out about him pesterin’ your wenches at that age,’ said Brownlee. ‘Course, I know they all do it, but nothin’ come of it.’

‘Wasn’t my wench. She was his’n. One his mamma left him. She begin a-waitin’ on him when he was about eleven or twelve—when he shed his nurse-mammy.’

‘Wonder he wasn’t a-ruint.’

‘Ruther have a boy a-pesterin’ a smart, little clean wench than have him a-drivin’ hisself crazy a-hankerin’ to. I’d been stronger—and smarter too—if my old man had a-give me a wench of my own before I was sixteen, a-goin’ on seventeen.’

‘Seventeen? I was nineteen, and even then she wasn’t mine or my pappy’s. She belonged to the man my pappy was overseein’ fer, a ugly sambo, I reckon, leastwise lookin’ back I think she was part Choctaw. Course, I sneaked some before that,’ conceded Brownlee. ‘Out in the patches when the hands was noonin’, whenever I could shun my paw.’

Maxwell showed little interest in the trader’s youth. Brownlee was a poor recommendation for boyhood continence. ‘In them days pappies didn’t know how hankerin’ fer a wench could stunt a boy and drive him lunatic.’ The intimation was that Brownlee’s shortcomings were chargeable to his father’s negligence. ‘Pro’bly the reason young men at the North are so sapless and witless—nothin’ but white gals to pester with when they boys.’

The trader was more interested in the goblet of corn whisky which Agamemnon was bringing than in Maxwell’s comments. Mem’s gait was unsteady, his eyes emitted a glassy glint. His hand trembled on the tray as he handed the drinks about, although he refrained from spilling them.

‘Come here, you black scoun’rel. Kneel down here and let me smell you,’ Maxwell commanded.

Memnon found refuge in tears. ‘I didn’t drink none. I didn’t do it, Masta, suh. I didn’t do it. I on’y jest taste to see was it hot. On’y jest taste, suh.’

Memnon knelt by Maxwell, afterwards he crawled on his knees toward Hammond, who sniffed him but casually.

‘That mean jest twenty-five more squashings with that paddle tomorrow.’ Hammond addressed his father, ignoring the Negro. ‘And a big drench of ipecac tonight last thing.’

‘No, Masta, suh, no,’ the darkie begged sotto voce, not daring to speak out lest he aggravate the sentence, and yet unable to keep silent. ‘I jest tasted.’ Memnon knew that in so factual and objective a mood Hammond was relentless; if his master had reviled and threatened him, he might have softened him with his repentance. Hammond did not even deign to address him. His resolution was not even tempered by his anger.

When Memnon saw that Hammond was unmoved by pity, he rose to his feet and slunk from the room, but he was entirely sobered. The whisky he had drunk to smother his anticipations of the morrow’s chastisement had lost its lethe. All the agility and promptitude he had displayed throughout the evening to avert the disaster had been cancelled out. The ipecac was a punishment that exactly fitted the crime. The very thought of it caused him to retch in anticipation. When he returned to the house from his excursion out into the wind-filled darkness, the yellow of Mem’s face had taken on a greenish hue. He was sick at his stomach and sick at heart.

‘As I was a-sayin’ about them Mandingos,’ Maxwell resumed his monologue, oblivious of the interruption, ‘they right satisfyin’—powerful, biddable, healthy. Cain’t un’erstand this Big Pearl a-fallin’ sick.’

‘How you know she pure Mandingo?’ Brownlee inquired.

‘Look at her! Look at her! Don’t have more than to look at her,’ answered her owner. ‘But I knows her history—all about her, too. Ol’ Colonel Wilson of Coign Plantation, up the road apiece, about fifty or sixty miles, needed some han’s and rid to Charleston to buy a passel of bozals. Course, it was back in the time when the Colonel was young and could ride, the days before Mista Tom Jefferson stopped ’em from bringin’ in brutes. Everything was law-abidin’.’

Hammond had heard the story before, and diverted himself by tickling Alpha’s feet and watching his reflexes. Brownlee was mildly interested in Maxwell’s tale, and even more in Hammond’s play with the young boy.

‘Colonel Wilson foun’ ’em unloadin’ a whole cargo of prime Mandingos, two or three hunerd big, docile, upstandin’ brutes, and he picked himself out four or five good ones. Colonel Wilson know a good nigger. They never cost much then—five, six or seven hunerd apiece. Two of ’em, a big buck and a stout wench, was about the purtiest things I ever see. That wench must have been nineteen hands, or near it, and the buck even taller; and they wasn’t jest tall, but they was thick, not fat but hard, hard as mahogany.

‘Course, Colonel Wilson bred the two of ’em together and got a wench child—a big sturdy wench over sixteen pounds the day she was dropped; but ’bout that time the vomit broke out at Coign and the old wench died and all the other Mandingos, all except the big buck and the baby.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Brownlee.

‘Turrible, turrible. But the baby growed; and when she big an’ ready to breed, Colonel Wilson didn’t have no Mandingo ’ceptin’ her pappy to breed her to, and he was bounden to keep his Mandingo blood pure. So what he do? He put the wench right back to her pappy.’

‘Didn’t he know no better than that?’ Brownlee asked. ‘Why, that awful; that incest; that goin’ agin the Bible. I knowed a white man up in Tennessee oncet that pestered his own nigger daughter and had a wench child, that was jest a little puny, that cried all the time, never did grow none, and was weak-minded. Jest lay and slobbered. About three years old, the old man, seein’ that it wasn’t never goin’ be worth nothin’, took pity and knocked it in the head. Your Colonel Wilson ought to know better’n that.’

‘Well, he didn’t. The wench brought him the biggest, most vigourest young saplin’ you ever see. Most grown now, but the Colonel won’t market him. Goin’ to keep him fer seed.’

‘I swan!’ said Brownlee.

‘Seein’ as how it worked so good the first time, Colonel Wilson put the young wench right back to her pappy agin, and this time got a wench baby, Big Pearl. I bought her and Lucy—that her mammy—offen the Colonel while Big Pearl was a-suckin’ yet.

‘That’s how I knows she is pure Mandingo. Her and Lucy and Colonel Wilson’s two—the old buck and the young one—are the only simon purentee Mandingos I knows about anywhures. Beautiful niggers, all on ’em.’

‘Real dangerous, I call it,’ said Brownlee. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. Whut you goin’ to do with your wench? No more Mandingos to mate her up with.’

‘When Hammond gits the time, I aims to have him ride to Coign Plantation and plead with Colonel Wilson to borrow the old bozal buck to us fer a month or two. I aims to breed Big Pearl right back once more to her pappy, and her grandpappy. The buck is sixty or sixty-five years, maybe seventy, come now; but I reckon he got sap in him yet.’

‘Don’t risk it, Mista Maxwell, suh. Don’t risk it. That awful.’

Brownlee’s horror only confirmed Maxwell in his determination. ‘Works fine in horses and cows and hogs and dogs and sich. I don’t see why it won’t work with niggers. Course, you got to have fine stock; no good with puny stock.’

‘You breedin’ in too fur, Mr. Maxwell. Thought you knowed more’n that about niggers.’

‘Ham thinks it all right. Don’t you, Ham? If he gives the nod to it, we goin’ to try it.’

Hammond had stopped playing with the sleeping child. He was tired, resting, hardly listening. ‘Papa, you been talkin’ that plan fer three years. Thought your mind was set, jest waitin’ fer me to go to Coign to fetch the buck. I’ll find the time in a few days. Don’t reckon there’s nothing to lose except Big Pearl’s time, if the foal should turn out puny or something.’

The Seth Thomas which ticked and ticked on the mantelpiece coughed and clanged eight rapid strokes of its bell, as if its duty were unpleasant and it wished to get it over with as quickly as possible.

‘That danged clock,’ observed Maxwell. ‘Keeps right time—about; but it’s an hour slow in its chiming. Kin fix it—ever git time.’

Hammond stretched. ‘Reckon it time to go up. ’Bout nine, ain’t it, Papa?’

Memnon brought the drinks for Maxwell and Brownlee as ordered.

His presence reminded Maxwell of his misdemeanour. He cautioned Hammond, ‘You won’t ferget that ipecac, Son?’

‘No, Papa. I mix it, I git upstairs.’

Memnon paled at the thought. ‘I ain’t needin’ no medicine now. I’s puked that corn, ever’ bit of it.’

‘You’s goin’ to puke some more. You’s goin’ to puke up all your innards with that dose I’m plannin’ to pour into you,’ Hammond threatened. ‘And you better go to sleep with them bucks in the stable, ’stead of in the hall by my door.’

‘Cain’t cure a nigger from drinkin’ corn, ’lessen you locks it up away from him,’ Brownlee observed.

‘I’ll cure this one; last thing I do—cure him or kill him.’

Memnon was silent. There was no rebuttal to fate itself. Hammond yawned and rose, reluctant to leave the warm fireside to go into the cold hall. He planted a perfunctory kiss upon his father’s cheek, bade Brownlee a polite good night and pleasant dreams, and, noting the inviting target of Alpha’s protruding rump, reached down and gave it a resounding smack. Alpha’s muscles were constantly bruised from Lucretia Borgia’s daily spankings, and the blow, intended only as a caress, was painful. The boy, only half aroused from sleep, cried out, reached around and rubbed his buttock and slept again. ‘Don’t fergit your foot-warmer; it’s a cold night, Papa,’ Ham joked.

‘Dite gone up a’ready?’ Hammond inquired of Memnon.

‘Dite go up early,’ Memnon replied.

‘Come ’long, then,’ said Hammond and limped out, followed by the apprehensive Negro.

Maxwell listened to the uneven steps of his crippled son upon the stairs. He censured himself again for having entrusted his heir to the uncertain temperament of a gelding.

‘Who that?’ Brownlee inquired.

Maxwell’s mind was upon the accident, long passed. ‘Whut you mean, suh?’

‘Who that? That Dite?’

‘Oh, that. That Hammond’s bed wench.’

‘Purty, I reckon,’ the trader voiced his imagination.

‘Right likely. Mustee, I guess.’

‘Light, eh? And young?’

‘Fourteen, mayhaps fifteen now. Why?’

‘I was jest a-thinkin’, jest a-thinkin’ whut a fine lot of niggers you all got. Got ’em all over the place, and won’t sell none.’