The year is 1755. On the French Caribbean island of Martinique, the slave girl Ayisha waits for her lover Joseph. They plan to run away together to Versailles, where Ayisha dreams of demanding justice for herself and her people from King Louis XV of France.

        Ayisha waited on the hill above the plantation, all the long afternoon and into the evening. At first, when she reached the shelter of a clearing in the trees, she had stared into the limitless blue of the sky and spread her arms out, knowing that not a soul was watching her, and that she alone governed every movement she was to make from then on. She lowered her arms and paced around the clearing, learning to wear the boy's clothes Joseph had gathered from his hut. She walked like Joseph, and then like the Master, but neither was right, since they were heavy, mature men. She practiced Golo, and made herself laugh, but of course he was wrong too, and his legs were shorter than hers.
        She settled on Moise, a slim, lithe lad with whom she used to wrestle when they were children. She had admired him secretly, but their rivalry was intense. He had had a sharp tongue, and great skill with his hands, and had begun working for the blacksmith and the carpenter while very young. He put on airs after that, which she mimicked to his face, until he would get so angry he would forget she was a girl, and not worth fighting, and go for her anyway.
        Moise was no more. He had been beaten for some expensive mistake in the workshop, and the flogging had been a routine one undertaken by Sarnet, who knew his business but when it was over Moise was dead. They had lifted him off the frame, and seen at once how his head hung, and a cry had gone up that echoed through the compound. No one could guess why he had died like that, and Sarnet himself had been baffled, for she still recalled the look on his face. Moise's parents had refused to believe, until they were shown the body. She remembered that, too.
        She sat down on a log and studied the slender knife that Joseph had given her. "Out there, every man goes armed." He had shown her how it could be kept in a slit made in the thick lining at the front of the jacket, so that with one movement of her hand she could snatch it out. Right beside it she had pinned her brooch, which grated against her flesh now and then, through the thin cotton shirt.
        Joseph had used the knife to shorten the hair around her face, bringing tears to her eyes as he hacked and pulled it into the untidy shape that sailors wore. She put her hands to it and felt the straggling pieces over her forehead, the thick clumps that hung over her ears, and then the tight mass pulled back behind her neck and plaited. "The sailors have their hair just this way, and they make it shiny with something." Despite the discomfort, her head felt very light without the kerchief she had worn for so many years. To go bareheaded, as men did, was exhilarating.
        Later she made her way cautiously along the hillside to a large flat rock where she had arranged to meet Joseph. She slithered along until she could look out through the tufts of grass growing at its edge, right down over the top fields, the copse of trees where the dairy was, the orchard and the big house. Beyond that, hidden by the curve of the land, was the village, and further round was the millstream where Lori would be, washing linen on flat stones by the ford.
        The thought of Lori returned often to Ayisha's mind, causing her pain each time. Joseph had told her the whole village knew she had disappeared right after the Master dismissed her, but no one had let on to any of the overseers. Lori would say nothing either, but Ayisha could imagine her anger and her fears. If her mother kept her own counsel, Ayisha's absence would not be known until dawn. Again and again, she had to prevent herself from running back to Lori, to see her one last time. But she had gone too far, and there was nothing to do now but wait at the landmark for Joseph.
        Behind her, somewhere on the hill, was the overgrown mouth of a cave, which led into a steep ravine. This opened into the larger gully through which the river flowed. The current forked further on, so that one swift stream cascaded down to turn the plantation mill wheel, and the other descended steep rapids before reaching the sandy bottom over which it ran into the bay. Joseph and some of the other young men had discovered the cave when they were on an expedition to cut candlewood, a long time before. His plan was that he and Ayisha should run up through the bushes past the opening, making a trail so that pursuers next day would think they had fled inland. In fact they would double back and make their way through the cave, down the stony ravine and so to the beach, and the freebooters.
        The visits of the freebooters were infrequent, but word of their coming always passed along the coast from Port Saint-Pierre to the river. Their vessel used to stand off the beach at night, while a longboat came ashore with empty barrels aboard. If any planter asked questions, the story was that the captain himself preferred the sweet water of the river to that obtained from the cisterns at Saint-Pierre. The real reason, however, was that the slaves at the Cascades sometimes had rum to trade. They were allowed to make their liquor from the inferior molasses that was a by-product of the factory, and the freebooters were ready to exchange cheap cotton fabric for it. Twice, when he was with a party sent down to fish for turtles, Joseph had met Captain Troyes on the beach. At this time, however, while they were so busy with the harvest, the people had no spare rum: there would be no one to meet the captain that night but Joseph and herself.
        Sunset came and she grew hungry. She fixed her eyes on the big house as the roofs turned blood-red and then brown, and the sea breeze began to blow inland with the coming of dusk. She thought of the office, as it had been described to her by one of the servants, during the long morning that she and Merle had spent in the scullery.
        Once night a week after supper, the Master paid the stewards. They came through the garden doors, and were kept standing in front of the desk while the Master reviewed their work, and then handed them their pay for the week. If he was in a good mood, he invited them to a take a cognac with him, but usually they were dismissed, to walk back to their quarters near the house. All through the Master's supper, the wages lay on top of the desk in the office, in full view of the servants, none of whom had ever dared touch them in the twenty years of the Master's rule. The coins glinted there in the candlelight, symbols of his power over white and black alike.
        When darkness fell she watched the lights of the big house and those of the stewards' quarters, and willed Joseph through the steps they had planned. As soon as there was a bustle on the side of the house where the dining room was, he would sneak in through the garden doors and take the gold. Then, when all was clear, he would glide up into the fields toward her. In the confusion, no one would ever think about the gold. With luck, neither its absence nor their own would be detected until dawn.
        All at once she saw torches between the buildings and knew the stewards had been called. She tensed, ears and eyes straining, and then to her joy thought she saw, partway up the slope and moving toward her, a dark shape, keeping low. She said his name softly, urging him on.
        Time passed, then she saw flickering movement outside the big house. Horses, and many men. Too far away to hear anything, she could only watch the pieces of a black and gold picture break and dissolve and reassemble at the farthest point of her vision. They were off, moving, the horses'; legs flashing against the light held by the slaves near the house; and then the flaming torches held high above the riders' heads leaped out over the fields. Light glanced off musket and sword, boot and saddle, and rippled over the earth beneath the horses' hooves. And down there in the patches of bright soil between the canefields she saw them, running sinuously over the dark lines made by wagon wheels, snaking ahead of the riders in a fleet mass of brown and white the Master's hounds.
        There was a long red flash in the night and the crash of a musket shot, followed by another. She rose dizzily and slid down the rock to the spot where she and Joseph were to meet, and pressed her back into the stone. She could not see the pursuit any longer, but she heard the crack of pistols also, and each detonation seemed to explode in her own head and chest. She tasted blood and realized she had bitten her lip, and then with a swish of branches and foliage Joseph was with her. She could just see him in the dark as he took her wrist and pulled her onward. "This way."
        They ran in eerie silence. Through the pounding in her head she listened for the hounds and riders behind, but the light breeze over the hill carried no noise, and they made none themselves on the soft grass of an open stretch of ground.
        Joseph stumbled again, fell on his knees and pointed to a low bush in front of them, thickly matted with lianas. He put both hands on the grass to catch his breath, and gave a muffled laugh. "I wore a pair of Golo's shoes, and kicked them off down there. They're searching for another scent."
        She knelt beside him and whispered into his ear. "You go first."
        He laughed again and put his hand into his shirt, and gave her a small cloth bag. The gold. He subsided, propped up on his right arm. Beautiful woman.
She put one hand on his shoulder. His shirt was damp with sweat, and with a sticky liquid that bubbled through her fingers from a ragged hole beneath. While running up the hillside he had been shot in the neck. Even as she realized this, his strength ebbed and he fell back. He said, "Kiss me."
          She pressed her lips to his to stop from screaming, and then below the hounds bayed, and the trample of hooves began. Joseph had put his left arm around her, and for a moment she felt the warm pressure of his hand below her shoulder blade, and his lips moving against hers. Even though danger howled at them out of the darkness they clung to each other with the same force that had drawn them together all their lives. Then his hand slipped to the earth, and his eyelids fluttered against her cheek. She saw each instant of his agony and her own heart slowed to the rhythm of his going. Her face was only inches from his, her hands were on his cheeks, and she could not tell whose tears flowed under her fingers. In the almost darkness the last gleam in his eyes flickered and went out. He was looking up toward the stars. He sighed, and the muscles of his chest moved against her, then to her horror he did not take another breath. In her mind she cried out to him, but she bit her lip to stop the sound, and instead seized his shirt at the shoulders and tried to pull him up.
        His weight defeated her, though she tugged at him roughly and moaned his name between her teeth. Then under her hands she felt the warmth leave his skin. She looked once more at his face, but he was smiling at nothing. She put her forehead on his breastbone. He was still and silent, gone from her. She felt his blood on her face, mingled with the tears that flooded from her eyes. Her mouth twisted, but she said the words aloud.
       " Joseph. I will come back. I will free us all. I swear it, I swear, on your life and mine."
        She did not close his eyes. She wrenched back the covering over the cave mouth, sat on the edge to pull the branches over behind her and at once plunged more than her own length into utter blackness, landing on dirt and sharp stones. She gasped, rose and pushed blindly on. Once she had penetrated further into the tunnel, finding her way by touching the uneven walls, there was no sound to be heard from above. The ancient lava, honeycombed and distorted, came low overhead and lacerated her head, hands and feet. She breathed as though she were underwater, dragging the air through her lungs like a thick liquid, then vomiting it back out again. She had drowned, and sunk to the bottom of a sunless ocean, never to surface again.