Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  Within the gaming house, all slept. A chamber quartet and harpsichord player slumped at their instruments in white frock coats and leggings. Gamblers slept face down on their tables alongside the casino’s staff, other than a black waistcoat-clad croupier who lay dozing on a roulette wheel, having narrowly missed impaling his head on the spike in the wheel’s center. Two burly men with knuckledusters and clubs lay snoring in the open doorway.

  The air of the room was chill.

  Abd al-Wahid consulted the witch’s candle; half the fifteen minutes had already elapsed.

  Two quick turns took the five mamelukes up a narrow staircase toward the bishop’s office. One of the bishop’s own men had given them the layout, shortly after Omar al-Talib had removed the last skin of the man’s left hand, plunging the hand into a bag of salt to stanch the flow of blood.

  Once he’d given his information, al-Talib had slit the man’s throat, stripped his uniform, and dropped him into the Mississippi.

  “Do you feel that?” Ravi whispered, racing up the stairs.

  “I believe the witch’s spell has made it cold,” Ahmed said.

  “Not that.” Ravi’s face looked troubled.

  The mamelukes burst through a heavy door with Abd al-Wahid at their head, swords drawn. Behind was an office, but an office that had been stripped of books. A desk remained, and chairs, and a painting on the wall of a man with a key at a crossroads.

  Abd al-Wahid cursed. “You were wrong, Ravi.”

  Ravi spat on the floor. “I wasn’t wrong. You see the importance of speaking precisely.”

  “And yet he isn’t here.” Ahmed looked at the witch’s candle. “You have at most three minutes, and then you must be out of the building. Find the bishop!”

  The other three men rushed back down the stairs, and then Abd al-Wahid did feel something. He stopped and controlled his breathing, trying to identify it.

  And then trying not to be aroused.

  “You feel it,” Ravi said.

  “What infernal power is that?” Abd al-Wahid asked. “Jinn? Houris?”

  Ravi shook his head slowly. “Ishtar. Ashtoreth. Cybele. Aphrodite. Venus.”

  “That is five things, O word-multiplying Jew.” Abd al-Wahid felt irritated.

  “It may be five goddesses,” Ravi said. “Or it may be a goddess with five names. This is an ancient fire.”

  “I feel its power,” Abd al-Wahid said. “If you were a woman, I would take you now. What do I make of this?”

  “If I were a woman, I would take you.” Ravi considered, and sighed. “This man is no ordinary houngan. He’s certainly no ordinary bishop.”

  Abd al-Wahid looked at the candle. “We must leave.”

  They rattled down the staircase and rejoined al-Talib, al-Muhasib, and al-Syri. Their blank looks and shaking heads answered Abd al-Wahid’s question before he asked.

  They crossed the plaza cursing. As they entered the hotel, the flush finally faded from Abd al-Wahid’s cheeks and the ache of lust disappeared from his limbs. What did it mean, that the Bishop of New Orleans had such power?

  In the lobby of the hotel, Abd al-Wahid stopped. The Onu Nke Ihunanya’s guard lay on the floor, throat slit. His knives were clenched in his hands, but unblooded, and the hotel’s lobby was otherwise empty.

  “The back stairs!” Abd al-Wahid drew his sword, but al-Talib and al-Muhasib were ahead of him, racing down the hall to the back stairs. Abd al-Wahid himself raced up the front stairs first—

  and found al-Farangi dead.

  The French mameluke sat exactly where Abd al-Wahid had left him, in the chair, with a curved sword across his knees. Like the hotel guard, his throat had been slit.

  Ravi rushed up at Abd al-Wahid’s elbow. “Sorcery? I see no sign of struggle, not here and not below.”

  Abd al-Wahid knocked open the doors of both the room he had used and the witch’s room. No sign of the girl. Her altar was gone—the table was there, but it had been stripped, and the chalk markings wiped from the floor.

  “By Musa’s beard!” Ravi howled, elsewhere on the floor. “The witch is gone!”

  Abd al-Wahid sheathed his sword and rejoined the Jew. “Sorcery?”

  Ravi shrugged. “If anything, there is less sorcerous paraphernalia in these rooms than there was twenty minutes ago.”

  “The…Ishtar. Could the bishop’s goddess have warned him?”

  “Or protected him. Maybe. If so, it warned him in advance. He was prepared to exit his casino and strike at us in this hotel even as we were striking at him. And he did it under my gaze.”

  A new voice shattered Abd al-Wahid’s eardrums with a screeching howl. It was a woman’s voice, and though it started as a wordless shriek, it soon dropped into a babble of frantic questions. “Osinachi! Osinachi? What has happened here? Who has done this?”

  The voice came from the lobby. Abd al-Wahid descended in a rush, and before stopping he crossed to the door to look across the plaza at the bishop’s casino. The door guards there were awake and standing, and the sounds of music came from the doors and through the obscene stained-glass windows.

  The witch’s spell had ended.

  Cursing under his breath, he turned to see the new speaker.

  She was an Igbo woman, hair graying, with a simple green dress but large gold rings on fingers, forearms, and ears. Behind her stood half a dozen burly Igbo men with cudgels and pistols.

  “You’re the manager of the Onu Nke Ihunanya?” he asked in English.

  “I am the owner.” Her fists clenched by her sides. “Onyinye Diokpo. Did you commit this murder? Did you witness it?”

  “I am Ahmed Abd al-Wahid,” he said, placing his hand over his heart and bowing slightly. “My companions and I are travelers from Paris. We returned moments ago to find your man dead.”

  “It was not your doing?” Diokpo’s eyes narrowed.

  “One of our own was also murdered. You’ll find his body upstairs.”

  “A foul deed.” The Igbo woman spat on the carpet.

  “By God it was,” the Egyptian agreed, and he stared at the hotel owner. “And the perpetrator shall pay.”

  * * *

  Etienne led Armand and two other men down the stairs into the crypt beneath the St. Louis Cathedral. The two, Philippe and François, dragged between them the hooded and bound mambo, Marie.

  Armand held a bloody knife in his hand and wore a satisfied snarl on his face.

  Philippe and François were known to Etienne, and were trusted. Otherwise, after what they were about to see, he’d have had to kill them.

  “What if they robbed you?” Armand asked.

  “We left very little money in the casino.” Etienne had a hard time speaking, given the ecstatic rush the Brides sent coursing through his veins. “Only enough to keep up the appearance. And we very carefully moved the Creole to different offices.” He meant Monsieur Bondí, but he avoided saying the name in the hearing of the priestess. “If they’ve robbed us, they’ve taken the day’s earnings, at most.”

  “They could kill the men we left behind,” Armand said.

  “That would be a loss.” Etienne examined the walls and niches of the crypt; even in the light of strong lanterns, he couldn’t tell the real ones from the false. “But it would be a loss I could bear. Worse would be the murder of tonight’s patrons, but I think they won’t go to that extreme. Not this time.”

  “You’re very confident. Forgive me if I remind you that this is a man who murdered your father as he officiated at the altar. And he tried to do the same to you, while you were burying…while you performed your father’s service.”

  Armand had been at the old bishop’s true funeral, outside the city, and at the end of a Vodun procession. “A brazen blow,” Etienne agreed. “And the Chevalier of New Orleans will pay for what he has done…for everything he has done. But if he began to murder the great and good of his city, merely because they had an appetite for placing money on the throw of dice at my establishment, he would make many
enemies, and principally of powerful people.” Etienne reached back into the appropriate niche of the false wall and gripped the real skull that had been incorporated into the door’s apparatus. Slipping his fingers through the eye sockets, he gripped the bone firmly and pulled it toward himself.

  He felt the resisting tug of the wire on which the skull was mounted, and then heard the click as the wire reached its full extension and the mechanism engaged.

  The false wall swung inward.

  Etienne ushered his men and their captive through the door and shut it, pressing it back into place to rearm the opening mechanism. The passage in which they stood was still part of the original catacombs, though de Bienville had had it walled off, so shelves of bones glared down at them.

  One skeleton had pride of place, fixed to the wall with iron nails just behind the door. It belonged to the architect, the mage-engineer who had built this passage for old Bishop de Bienville. A wizard had been necessary, because the construction had been undertaken in complete secrecy and had to be concealed from New Orleans at large even as it was happening. That magician, a man of great learning who had come all the way from Providence for the purpose, had made a vow of silence, and upon breaking that vow had died a sudden and very painful death.

  De Bienville had nailed his body here as a warning to others. He’d repeatedly and in great detail told Etienne about the architect’s death throes. With some glee, he never omitted the detail that the architect’s untimely passing had allowed de Bienville to recover all the money he’d paid the man.

  Etienne had always believed that de Bienville’s obsession with secrecy would prevent him from telling his chevalier cousin about the passage. With no ambush waiting for him now, he seemed to have been proved correct.

  They left behind the dead man and turned two bends in the passage, to where the catacomb gave way to a small brick-lined chamber. A table and three chairs sat on a rough rectangle of carpet. Two passages exited the room in addition to the one by which Etienne and his party had entered; one led to a secret entrance into the basement of Etienne’s gambling den.

  Etienne gestured, and his men sat the mambo on a chair and removed her hood.

  Etienne sat opposite her. “Ma cherie,” he said.

  “Marie.”

  “Marie, alors. You’re a sweet young girl. And you’re a mambo, but you follow the cool loa. Ayizan, and Loko. What are you doing taking up a war with me?”

  “I was asked to do it.” The girl was beautiful, and though she had had her head in a sack for more than ten minutes, she gave no sign of discomposure, not so much as a blink. “I consulted the loa, and they said I could.”

  Etienne shook his head and tsked. “Like a cheap bokor. Like a mercenary.”

  She held her head high. “I’m a mambo-initiate. I do as my loa permit, and I don’t take orders from any Christian priest.”

  “What makes you so sure I won’t kill you right now?”

  Marie shrugged. “I’m not sure of that at all. If you kill me, I join the gede loa with the clean conscience of one who has done as she was asked, and as she was permitted to do.”

  “And yet surely it has occurred to you that I could have killed you in the hotel.”

  “It has occurred to me.”

  “What do you know of the maryaj-loa, mambo?”

  Her eyes widened. “If you think you can assault me to break my will, houngan, you’re mistaken.”

  Etienne laughed. “I may in the course of your life do many terrible things to you, ma cherie. I may kill you. I may torture you. I may kill or torture your loved ones. I may take your possessions, I may drive away your flock. But I will never, ever assault you.”

  She raised her chin, pursing her lips as if to invite a kiss. “I’m desirable.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  She leaned forward slowly, exposing her breast, and her knees parted. “Very desirable.” It was a girl’s attempt at seduction, not a woman’s. Too hasty. Too obvious.

  “Far too young for a man my age, but yes, you’re beautiful.”

  “Far too young…because you’ve become Christian?” She narrowed her eyes to examine his face. “Some have whispered that Etienne Ukwu, once the scourge of the Vieux Carré, has become a toothless lion, a mumbler of scripture. Perhaps it’s true.”

  Etienne chuckled. “There’s half a truth in there, Marie, at most. No, I’m not restrained by any Christian vow.”

  “Then it’s this maryaj-loa?”

  “Yes.” Etienne stood and loosed the white cravat to let himself breathe better. He wanted a cigarette, but now wasn’t the time. Instead, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and the front of his shirt, and then he removed his jacket and cufflinks, handing them to Armand.

  Despite her earlier brave face, the girl shrank back in her seat.

  “You don’t have my consent,” she said. “Not to any marriage, not to anything.”

  “I don’t need it,” Etienne said. Then he relaxed and let the goddesses Ezili Freda and Ezili Danto fill him.

  Etienne was married to two goddesses. It was marriage, the maryaj-loa, between a man and a divine being. Because he was married to Ezili Freda and Ezili Danto, Etienne could have no mortal lover. It would shock most of the patrons of his casino to know that the famously debauched and thuggish owner of the gambling establishment was, in fact, a virgin.

  Married to two goddesses, a crone and a maid.

  And now a priest in two traditions.

  Lust and power filled Etienne, and he felt as he always did his body’s overwhelming need. But he knew, from his experience of the Brides and from the promises they whispered to him, that he didn’t have to have recourse to a mortal partner. The fire welling up in him burned his skin, aroused all his senses—

  and then passed through him—

  into Marie.

  Her eyes fell from a wide-open into a half-lidded gaze, the lizardlike wanton stare of a woman gazing upon her prey. She leaned forward, shoulders heaving as her breath quickened, but she remained tied.

  “Feel it,” Etienne said. His own body still tingled. “Feel the power of the maryaj-loa. Feel the Brides speak to you. They tremble with want. You’re full of desire, too, Marie. You shudder with desire and you will obey me.”

  “I…” Marie hesitated.

  “You will obey me,” he said again.

  “I will…”

  “You will obey me.”

  “I will…not.” The young mambo looked up, and her eyes were still a lizard’s, but now instead of the half-lidded stare of a creature basking in the heat of a sun that gave it life and could also destroy it, her eyes were open, cold, unblinking. “Mère Ayizan help me, Père Loko give me strength, I will not give in to you, houngan of Papa Legba, invoker of Maitre Carrefour, bringer of war to New Orleans.”

  “I didn’t bring war,” Etienne said softly. He stepped away, wiping the sweat of lust from his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

  “But you won’t let it end.”

  That was true. Well, mother? He took his mother’s locket from his waistcoat and looked at it. The metal tingled. What do I do with this one, who helps your husband’s murderer?

  Let her live.

  Etienne hesitated. She’s dangerous, mother.

  She lives.

  Etienne put away the locket. Would his mother always force him to pull back, when directly confronting a woman? She had done so with the Appalachee witch, even urging him to help the girl, and now she intervened with this mambo. Was it because his mother was a woman? Was it because of the maryaj-loa, did the goddesses require this restraint?

  But his gede loa had spoken, and he was careful to show no weakness or hesitation.

  “Hood her again.”

  Marie bared her teeth in fury as François dropped the sack over her head again.

  His mother had told him to let her live, but she hadn’t told him to be kind.

  Etienne leaned in to whisper to Armand. “Put her back in the hotel. The same room, if
possible.”

  “And if it’s occupied?” Armand asked.

  “As close as you can,” Etienne said, “but I think the room will be vacant. Its purpose has failed, and I don’t think the mamelukes are the sort to linger over failure.”

  “Shouldn’t we kill the mambo?” Armand wasn’t superstitious.

  Etienne shook his head. “Not this time.” Reaching forward, he cut a long lock of Marie’s hair and tucked it into his pocket. She hissed and pulled away, but too late. “Not this time.”

  * * *

  Ezekiel Angleton didn’t feel the cold.

  He knew that he should; snow fell on his tall hat, and on the moldering threadbare coat clinging to his shoulders. It wasn’t the frozen snow and sleet of the Covenant Tract, not the ice that fell on Boston like marzipan upon an Italian cake, but thick, fluffy balls, like a host of caterpillars drifting down from heaven to caress Ezekiel’s face.

  Lovely snow, snow for marveling at with a lady by one’s side.

  Lucy.

  But though the snow-caterpillars crawled down Ezekiel’s cheeks and down the neck of his shirt, he didn’t feel the cold.

  It was nothing.

  The coat didn’t keep him warm. The coat guided him. Even in his sleep, he felt its gentle drag, and when he stood, it was as if an invisible hand had him by the collar. If he raised his foot off the ground without willing a direction, the coat chose the direction for him.

  Always toward Johnsland.

  Ezekiel didn’t feel the miles, either, though he’d walked hundreds of them. One boot had split at the side, letting two toes protrude and poke lopsided dots into every snowpack. He didn’t feel it.

  He didn’t sleep. For several days, he had lain awake at night, staring at the early winter sky. Did fear stop him from dreaming? Did he dread the triumph of the Witchy Eye? The failure of his errand for his master, Oliver Cromwell, the Painter who followed the Carpenter in order to perfect the great schemes of God?

  Then he realized that his sleeplessness was a gift. He didn’t become more delirious. He ate and drank but little. His own cheeks were cold. His master Cromwell had given Ezekiel a new gift, alongside the gifts from Ezekiel’s first master, Christ. Fortitude. Stamina. Will. Heedlessness to the weakness of the flesh.