The fevers for some were passing. Children now played in the yard. Women went on long, constitutional walks with their husbands and beaux through the fields of the house. Slaves went before them, carrying red banners to warn off field hands and poachers.

The child who had first contracted the pox died in the night. The pestilence had grown so thick within his throat in colonies and clusters that he could not even sip water without the most excruciating pain. Late one night, as his brothers lay beside him, something within him ruptured, and with spasms of asphyxiation, he choked, and, hanging off the bed, he quivered and ceased; taken to that place where, I trust, the waters are cool on the tongue and the sunlight eternal.

His body was carried out to the shed, where it corrupted.

I ministered to the Young Man who had caught the pox worst. His disfiguration was complete, his whole skin clotted with pustules. They bled upon the linens, and every position was agony. We could not rearrange his limbs so that his nerves might quiet their shrill attack; he desperately sought, but could not find, sleep’s oblivion.

Waking was a torment to him.

My mother’s hands and face had burst forth in sores. I sat by her side when I could.

The darkness in the slaves’ quarters was cut only by rushlights. In that ruddy light, I could not see the full bloody blush of the pustules. They ran across the ridges of her cheeks.

She reached up with her hand, already encrusted, and touched the excrudescencies gingerly.

“I won’t scratch them,” she said. “They will not scar if they don’t burst.”

Mr. Gitney had given me a lotion to spread over her sores. I put some upon my fingers and rubbed her face gently.

She wept. Her mouth was an horrible shape; a lamentatory shape.

At other times, she did not weep, but stared at the rafters and repeated, “I will not scratch, Octavian. Although I itch. I have never known an itch like this one. It fills the room.”

I fetched her some water from the ewer.

“Can you feel it?” she asked. “You must. It is like a god. All-knowing.”

At other times, blessedly, she slept.