?Twenty-One.

She tripped down the gallery steps and ran hard down the old path, on and on until the path gave way to weeds and bramble that tore at her meager skirts and shins, beyond the crumbling old shanties and storehouses and liveries, beyond the sugar mill virtually lost under the tangle of wild blackberry and honeysuckle vines.

On and on and on, she ran until the breath burned like fire in her lungs. On until the wild growth gave way to a clearing on a hill with a solitary ancient oak whose twisted limbs spread like some palatial emerald roof overhead. And there, rising from the earth, a blur of white amid the shadows, was a carved marble angel, naked, with cascading hair and her wings outstretched. She overlooked the valley like a goddess.

MAUREEN JAROD BROUSSARD 1817 1837 WHOM THE GODS LOVE DIES YOUNG.

Juliette approached the high angel, touched her fingertips lightly to the smooth, hard planes, traced the deep etchings in the feathered wings and the coils of her hair tips- a wild array of wind-tossed curls that draped over one naked breast like a toga. It was her own face, her own eyes and lips lifted toward the heavens.

No, Maureen's face, caught in its youthful eternal beauty.

A month ago, she might have fled in disgust.

Instead, she sank upon the blanket of close-cropped grass and wild primroses, her cheek pressed against the earth as she curled her legs up under her skirt. Dear merciful God, she felt tired.

"Mama, what shall I do now?" she asked softly. "How will we survive? What will I do if Chantz never comes home again?" She squeezed her eyes closed and the pain swelled in her chest. Dear God, let him come home again.

She drifted.

Gliding through the tall drifts of marsh cattails and top-heavy sunflowers rode a woman on a tall white horse, her hair a blaze of banners behind her. Closer and closer she came until it seemed that the ground thundered with the hoof falls and the wind groaned in a rush of noise like a thousand storm clouds colliding.

"Mama?" she cried, watching herself- a child- raising her little arms up to the advancing steed, a sense of jubilance lifting her tiny feet from the earth as if she were flying.

"Lady? Lady, you awright?"

Juliette opened her eyes and blinked away her tears.

A grizzled face with a long white beard and bushy eyebrows peered down at Juliette. She thought briefly that she had died and gone straight to heaven. How else could she explain the images of her mother- now this face, ancient as time immortal with kindly eyes and lips, what she could see of them, tipped up in a smile?

Except God's breath wouldn't smell as if something had crawled in his craw and died. Nor would his body reek with so sour an odor she felt her stomach roll.

Scrambling to her feet, Juliette backed away, stopping short as the angel's toe jabbed into the small of her back. Beyond the man materialized others, all moving slowly through the morning heat, through the knee-high grass, clothes in tatters and filthy. Children followed, hanging on their parents' skirttails, hollow-eyed and young faces streaked with river muck. They all stared back at Juliette with equal curiosity and suspicion as they looked first at her, then up at the angel, then back at her.

Whispers scattered through the groups, turning their expressions all the more somber.

"Who are you?" she finally demanded. "What are you doing on Belle Jarod?"

The old man pointed toward the river. "Been yonda campin' now on a month, I reckon. Come up from N'awlins way. Got out before the fever took hold. Before folks started dyin' like flies. Be lookin' for work."

Juliette frowned and glanced over the crowd, now more than two dozen at least and more arriving, old and young, their Caucasian skin dark and rough as old leather. She supposed there were women as young as her nineteen years, though you couldn't tell it, judging by the suffering grooved into their gaunt features. The boys, too, had a shadow of misery in their eyes. Old before their time, like dead men walking. It was all enough to make her forget, momentarily, about her own fear and sadness.

"Why have you come here?" she asked in a dry, rough voice. "Why have you come to me?"

"You need help. You be needin' planters to turn this valley. Turn it over for sugarcane like it used to be."

"How do you know what Belle Jarod used to be?"

"Seen it with my own eyes, lady. Cane tall as two men and fat as my arm. Good cane, and sweet. Sarah yonda done cut her teeth on Belle cane."

Juliette glance toward the woman with long golden hair not much older than herself.

"I haven't any money," she said wearily, feeling the tears threaten again.

"You have land," came the voice, and Juliette turned to find Emmaline standing knee high in dark green grass.

Startled, Juliette sank against the monument- its sharp edges biting into her back. Yet, some emotion- not grief- assuaged the onrush of despair and replaced it with a numbing sense of befuddlement. What in Heaven's name was Emmaline doing here with these people?

Her eyes red and swollen from crying, Emmaline moved closer, lifting one hand to point toward the cluster of silent onlookers. "There are a hundred men here, Juliette. A hundred families. They're accustomed to making do with very little. There are some folk who will try to tell you that these people are worthless and lazy. Well, they're wrong. They simply need someone willing to trust in them. To believe in their worth. Give each of these families ten acres to do with as they wish and reap the rewards of their appreciation and loyalty for the remainder of their lives." Juliette looked beyond the scattering of men, women, and children, to the stretch of green land where once her father's cane had grown. In the silence that stretched out in that moment, she felt, as she always did in moments of such immense grief and confusion, an odd sense of calm- like one must feel the very moment of one's death- a calm acceptance of the inevitable. Often in those moments reason arose more clearly- as it did now.

She had begun this journey with one dream in mind. That Belle Jarod would rise from the ashes.

And so it would.

When Juliette jolted from sleep she had been dreaming of Chantz- that she had awakened to find him

walking up the long alley from the river road- sauntering in that long slow stride that made her heartbeat

quicken. His eyes were blue as April skies.

Covering her nose and mouth with her kerchief, she tried her best not to gag from the awful stench of burning Spanish moss- Louis was convinced that the acrid smoke would keep the pestilence at bay.

The smoke from the bonfires infiltrated the house and trees; indeed the entire sky had become like the foul clouds of coal smog that suffocated London.

What had awakened her?

Her bedroom door opened and Little Clara stood there, her eyes watering and swollen from the smoke.

"Best you come quick, Mistress Julie."

"What's happened, Little Clara? Has Chantz-"

"It be Miss Phyllis. She in an awful mess."

Juliette pulled on her dress and hurried down the stairs. Through the haze of smoke, she could barely

make out the figures in the salon. Phyllis sat hunkered over on the settee, her face buried in her hands.

Liza watched her from the doorway, her hands clasped at her waist.

"What's happened?" Juliette asked, her gaze locking with Liza's.

"It's horrible." Phyllis wept and shook. "My parents... my parents are dead-"

Liza grabbed Juliette's arm. "Leave her."

"What do you mean, leave her?" Juliette demanded, yanking her arm away. "She's distressed-"

"She just come from a death house. She got it on her." Her eyes slightly wild, Liza glared toward Phyllis and cried, "What you doin' comin' here? Bringin' that pestilence to Belle Jarod? And where is Andrew?

Why ain't he with you?"

"I've... got no place else to go-"

"What's wrong with Horace Carrington? If anybody deserves to die then he does."

"Please." Phyllis looked into Juliette's eyes. "Don't send me to Horace."

Liza made another grab for Juliette, but Juliette shoved her hand away and hurried across the room, stood by the settee where Phyllis rocked in her fear and grief, and stared down at the wreck of a woman who only vaguely resembled Phyllis Buley. The soiled black mourning dress hung on her thin frame. Her hair trailed in limp strands around her ashen face.

Sinking back against the settee, Phyllis wearily shook her head. "Everyone is dying. Hundreds. Thousands."

"Where is Andrew?" Juliette asked as steadily as possible.

"I... don't know. After Papa died..." She shook her head as a new rush of tears rose and fell. "Volunteers were needed, he said, to collect the dead and to secure the quarantine. He left me there... I couldn't stay," she cried frantically. "I couldn't stay there another minute. So I ran. I ran until I couldn't run anymore." She clutched Juliette's arm, her broken, dirty nails cutting into Juliette's flesh. "Please don't send me away, Juliette. I know you despise me-"

"I don't despise you, Phyllis." She glanced down at her arm.

"Well you should," she said angrily, her dark eyes flashing. "You should because I've despised you since the moment I heard that Chantz had married you. I'm ashamed to say that I wanted you to die. I wanted you to be struck by this horrible fever. I imagined that Chantz would come back to me and..."

Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed in a broken voice, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. Will you ever forgive me?"

Juliette sank onto the settee and took Phyllis in her arms. "There's nothing to forgive, Phyllis. Hush now. I'll have Rosie prepare you a meal-"

"You're not going to allow her to remain here, surely."

Juliette looked around.

Emmaline stood at Liza's side, her face soot streaked and sweating. "Look at her." She pointed at Phyllis, her hand trembling. "She's just come from a death house. She's brought the pestilence into this house and you're holding her in your arms."

"Liza," Juliette said. "Have Rosie prepare food for Phyllis. I'll put her in my room-"

"You're sentencing us all to die," Emma declared furiously.

Standing, one hand resting on Phyllis's shoulder, Juliette shook her head. "If you disapprove, Emmaline, you're welcome to leave Belle Jarod. I've extended hospitality and respect to you because you're Chantz's mother, but you're to remember above all else that you're a guest here. I know in my heart that if Chantz were here, he would do the same."

"Chantz isn't here," Emmaline shouted. "He's out there somewhere. He might be dead already-"

"Stop it." Emmaline backed away as Juliette moved toward her. "I won't hear you talk like that again, do you understand me? Chantz is going to come home. He's going to walk in through that door at any moment."

Emmaline shook her head. "No he isn't and we all know it. People are dying by the thousands out there. I've heard the stories. Bodies stacked one on top of the other, entire families, hauled away in wagons like slaughtered sheep. It's here already. I can smell it." She glanced from Juliette to Phyllis then Liza. "You can burn all the damn moss in the world, incinerate the air with heat and suffocating smoke, but if it's here already, in one of us, we don't stand a chance of whipping it. Once it takes hold, we're all dead people. And inviting her into our midst is suicide."

Turning on her heels, Emmaline stormed out through the front door.

"She's right." Phyllis stood, swayed, drew back her shoulders, and forced a tight smile. "I shouldn't have come here. I've put your lives in jeopardy. I'll leave-"

"No." Juliette frowned, and without looking at Phyllis or Liza again, walked to the open front door and onto the gallery. Though the smog bit at her eyes and burned her nostrils, she looked down the long alley toward the distant river- empty the last days of steamers. Emma had been right, alas. Some stillness had crept over Belle Jarod the last day. The eerie cries of a drove of screaming crows in the trees near the pond only added to the consuming loneliness, the sense of despair and impending loss.

"Mistress Julie?"

Wearily, Juliette turned to find Louis standing at the far end of the gallery. A Negro child stood at his side. He held her little hand in his massive one. A moment passed before she recognized the child as Sally. Then, beyond Louis, others stepped through the bushes, faces frightened and wary of Juliette's response. They were Maxwell's Negroes, she realized, and she stared at them one by one in confusion until a sudden realization struck her like a fist. Her gaze flew back to Louis.

"Dear God," she whispered.

"They runnin', Miss Julie. Gots to git away from Holly. Massa Max be sick. Real sick. Folk say it come on him yestaday. Boris Wilcox done took off last night." He turned Sally toward her fretful mother and gave her a gentle pat on the head, watched as Sally scurried off through a cluster of wildflowers to her mother's side. Then he turned his big, soulful eyes back on Juliette. "Gots to go, Mistress. Gots to git out whilst we can. Folks be movin' north fo' d'stockade paddy rollers close us off. That happen and we is all dead."

"Where is Tylor?"

Louis shook his head. "Went to N'awlins and ain't come back. 'Spect he stuck now that the paddy rollers is out. They is shootin' anybody who try to cross the barricades." In a gentler voice, he repeated, "We gots to go. Fo' it's too late."

Juliette sank against the pillar and closed her eyes. Where was the elation she thought she might feel over Maxwell's misfortune?

"Yes," she replied without opening her eyes. "Have Rosie and Tessa prepare food. Tell the others. You must remove the children as quickly as possible. Now hurry. Put as much distance as you can between you and Belle Jarod before nightfall." As Louis turned to leave, she asked, "Who is left at Holly, Louis? Did anyone remain behind to help Maxwell?"

"No," he said, then turned and joined the others.

"You stayin', ain't you?" came Liza's voice behind Juliette.

Juliette sat down on the gallery step and propped her elbows on her knees. She looked off down the

alley, toward the river. "I'll wait for Chantz."

"What if he don't come home, Julie?"

"He will." She forced a smile.