From one of these January learned that the plantation of Aramis Vitrac lay on the other side of the island, "just down that road there." Their French was better than he'd feared it might be, though old-fashioned and strangely pronounced: ch'min for chemin; l' for le. Grimy, exhausted, aching in every bone and limb, he climbed the low hogback of tawny sand, through palmetto, fern, and creeper, cypress and oleander already putting forth the whites and crimsons of tropic glory. Green flats of rice bent to salt wind. On the other side of the path a work gang hacked at the ditches for next month's sugar crop. From the top of the path he heard the surf.
He half-expected to find Rose sitting on the gallery-of the three-room, post-and-daub plantation house, reading Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science in England. Part of him, the part that had died in Paris, half-expected not to find her at all.
In fact she was working in the garden behind the house, a half-wild riot of dark-leaved azaleas, spinaches, and young peas. The rabbitry young woman who came out onto the gallery, led by what January guessed to be the single house servant, pointed her out to him. "This isn't about that school in the city, is it? Truly, what happened there was not her fault. I know my husband's sister, M'sieu. She is impetuous, but her heart is pure, like glass, like steel. She would give everything she owns to those she loves, or those in her care." Her quick grin showed two teeth lost to childbearing, and she added,
"Except perhaps her books."
"I'm not from the school." January looked gently down into the narrow, anxious face. "I'm only a friend."
Rose sat back on her heels at the sound of the voices on the gallery. So she was watching him as he came down the gallery steps and through the neat dirt paths of the rambling garden. She pushed her spectacles straight on her nose, and he knew by the attitude of her back, by the angle of her straight square shoulders, that she recognized him instantly. She settled back, her hands folded in her lap, until he came near.
"Ben." She was trying to hide it, but there was deep joy in her face, her voice.
"Rose."
Joy sprang to her face, but when he helped her to her feet she took her hand out of his at once, closing it up on itself-her lips closed, too. He saw her at war with old hurts and old fears, thinking about what she ought to say. "I'm not here to ask anything of you," he said. "I just wanted to see if you were all right."
Three days' journey down the bayous? He could almost hear the words as they went through her mind, and he smiled at the absurdity of his own assertion.
"Well, from what you told me of your brother I knew I couldn't write."
It surprised her into laughter, like sunlight on the waning sea.
"I brought you some books." He held out to her the parcel he'd carried down from town: a volume of Sappho he'd found at a Customshouse sale; Hamilton's Theory of Systems and Rays from the same source; Lyell's Principles of Geology and a wonderfully hair-raising English novel by the poet Shelley's wife. "If you weren't here, at least I could have asked your family of you. Your sister-in-law seems a nice woman."
"Alice is a darling. Of course Aramis-my brother-half-brother-is a complete illiterate and she's not much better-why is it Creoles never educate their daughters? but Alice is like Cora: willing to accept that that's the way I am." Her face lost the sparkle of her smile. "Did you ever find out what happened to Cora?"
January shook his head. "We caught the men who were taking people off the streets. They'd been kidnapping them out of their homes, too, some of them, and out of the sheds in the Swamp where slaves sleep out if their masters let them. Hdier the water seller was trading the information to a tavern-keeper for a cut of the profits, when they sold them to cotton planters in the Missouri Territory."
He saw the fragile jaw set hard and wished there were an easier way to say it, or something better to say.
"I've been writing to brokers and authorities in Arkansas and Missouri and anywhere else we can trace the ring's contacts. But, of course, no one's going to admit they were buying kidnapped free men."
She drew in breath,