‘What are you doing there?’ he shouted. July stood as still as her quickening breath would allow, in the hope he would think her just a likeness from a portrait upon the wall.
‘What are you doing?’ he said again. And the whole table turned to see where July was standing. July, stepping out of the meagre shadow, held the bottle as if she were about to pour it for these guests.
‘Oh, Marguerite, thank goodness,’ her missus said. ‘Are you bringing the second course, we’ve been waiting an age?’
‘Yes, where is the second course?’ her massa said, ‘Tell Godfrey the ladies have been waiting quite long enough for their sweet.’
But the man from Windsor Hall said, ‘Can’t you see that she’s stealing from you?’
There was a quarrel begun at the table. July knew that she was its cause, but she could not follow what the white people were saying of her, for a noise like the rush of a wave over stones filled her ears. Her missus was blushing and flushed. Her massa’s eyes were rolling and peevish. Tam Dewar, looking to the window, began rising from his seat.
‘Come here, girl,’ someone said. But who? July was not sure. Was it her missus? Should she fall to her knees and beg her not to have her whipped?
‘I said, come here.’ It was the man from Windsor Hall. Him who had just woken to expose her crime. He beckoned her to him with an angry gesture, while her missus nodded for her to obey him. July wanted to run from this place and hide in the stables with the grey mare. Mr Godfrey, a scream within her head yelled, Mr Godfrey, come get me from here.
‘Come here now, nigger!’ The command came, once more, upon a vexed breath. July’s eyes were blind with tears and she took the smallest steps her feet would allow. Eventually she arrived by the side of this man. His drunken breath, blasting upon her face, rocked her giddy as he said, ‘What were you doing there?’ Then, as his ill-tempered spittle dried upon her cheek, she felt his hand, discreetly, out of all view of the other guests, searching across the back of her skirt. Fiddling at a seam, pulling upon the fabric, groping like a tiny rodent looking for a dark corner. His sweaty fingers soon found the opening to the garment and quickly burrowed in. Placing his full palm over her bare buttocks he squeezed her flesh and said quietly, ‘Well, what were you doing? Stealing, weren’t you?’
‘Me no steal, massa, me no steal.’ July said. His finger had a jagged nail that scraped across her skin as it probed to find other holes to fill.
‘You’re a little thieving nigger, aren’t you,’ he almost whispered into July’s ear.
‘Oh, come on, let her go so the ladies can get the second course,’ the Reverend Pritchard said from across the table.
‘Not until she admits she’s a thief,’ the Windsor Hall massa told him.
July kept as still as she could within this white man’s grasp, for the fingers upon his rude hand began to nip and pinch at her buttocks. But then, suddenly, there came a great commotion of running feet from outside.
The doors to the room suddenly swung open with a fierceness that extinguished most of the dying candles. Two men dressed in militia blue bounded in upon the room, bringing in the wood-smoke and dung stink of the night air. July was sure these men had come to take her away—to the stocks, or the wheel at Rodney Hall. She twisted herself from the man’s grasp and his fingernail tore the flimsy seam of her skirt as he snatched his hand from out of it.
July dashed under the sideboard and clung her arms around the wood of its leg. She gripped it tight as the snake that was carved there, lest someone made bid to grab her.
But no one came. They did not even glance her way.
‘There is trouble.’ A deep, hoarse voice began addressing all at the table. ‘A great deal of trouble. The negroes are burning plantations in the west. We need every man here to report for militia duty now.’
At once, many feet began passing by July in her hiding place—clattering around upon the wooden boards before her. Tam Dewar’s sturdy brown boots were out the door with the militia men’s muddy black shoes following. The massa from Unity’s slippered feet skipped a dance as he said,