Chapter Seventeen
Duncan did not understand the grin on Gabriel’s face when he arrived to watch Morris be cut down. The pharaohs too had seemed amused as they laid the unconscious sergeant over a horse and led him away to the overseers’ barn. An hour later, when the sun was burning their skin in the fields, they heard the groan of heavy axles and saw a crew of Africans hauling the cut timbers on oxcarts toward the knoll at the bottom of the fields. The Africans had been told they were cutting timbers for a new shed but Duncan knew better.
Workers in the manor compound stood on the lawn and watched as the slaves fitted the joints together, hammering in pins and positioning the joined pieces under the direction of some of the overseers. As the lunch cart began its slow journey into the fie
