Witchy Eye

by D. J. Butler

  “A man does not always share his father’s ideals,” Jacob Hop pointed out.

  Bill thought of his son Charles and wondered what ideals the young man held, and whether he was the sort of man who would fight for them. “Come on, Jake. We have a cotton trader to meet.”

  Don Luis Maria Salvador Sandoval de Burgos lived in a house that climbed up its own white columns and pink stucco walls, scattering wide fern-sprouting balconies and showers of lilies, orchids and jasmines that collapsed into a hubbub of garden barely contained by a fleur-de-lis-tipped iron fence. It nestled between two similarly aristocratic abodes, and two swordsmen idled just within its tall gate, watching the wide, calm street sleep through the pre-dawn light.

  The other homes on the street were similarly large, opulent, and guarded.

  Bill stood in the shadows several houses away and considered the tactical situation. He doubted the Don would welcome his arrival, but his alternatives to an open approach were problematic. Stealth was definitely not his forte, and it was not obvious to him that even a stealthy man could sneak past the guards; nor could he see any other way into the yard. Attacking the guards would put an end to any possibility that he might be paid what he was owed, even if he won.

  “Friend Bill,” Jacob Hop said. “Is this an appropriate moment for a minor cantrip?”

  “Yes, Jake, it might very well be. I don’t believe, however, that a letter in French is likely to serve our present need. What else might you be able to do?”

  Hop looked at Sandoval’s manse. “Do you wish harm to that house? Shall I destroy it?”

  Bill chuckled. “No, Jake, I merely need to speak with the house’s occupant.”

  “That seems easy enough.” Hop considered. “Shall I put those two men to sleep?”

  “Can you do that?” Bill asked.

  “We are close to the river,” Jacob Hop explained. “Jibber jabber me honky wonk buggeroo,” he added, or something that sounded very similar. The two men at Don Sandoval’s gate crumpled to the ground.

  Bill looked up and down the street—the other guards hadn’t seen the collapse, or possibly didn’t care.

  “Excellent work, Jake.” Bill clapped his companion on the shoulder and strolled to the Don’s house.

  Bill pushed the gate open, stepped over the snoring toughs, and marched up to the double-wide oak door. The little Dutchman followed, and whenever Bill turned to look at his companion, he found him grinning.

  Bill revised his ambitions upward as he clanked the heavy brass knocker of the door. Jacob Hop was turning out to be a very can-do sort of wizard, and Bill might actually be in a position to demand his twenty looeys, rather than plead for them. Indeed, if his former employer didn’t cooperate, Bill might be in a position to simply take the money.

  And why stop there? He could rob Don Sandoval.

  He instantly dismissed the thought. He was the chevalier’s man, now, on the chevalier’s errand—he was only stopping here because he was owed money, and he needed the cash to arm himself.

  The hatch opened and through the iron grill Bill recognized Don Sandoval’s face. The Don’s eyes opened wide, Bill groped through his fatigued wit to find some clever way to put his demand to the old hidalgo, and then Don Sandoval shut the hatch again.

  Damn.

  Well, maybe Hop could knock down the door with his gobbledygook. Bill turned to the deaf-mute to make the suggestion—

  and Don Sandoval opened the door.

  “Sir William!” He lunged.

  Bill flinched and stepped back, reaching for the hilt of his sword, but to his utter astonishment, the Spaniard grabbed him by the face and kissed both his cheeks.

  No matter how long he lived in New Orleans, Bill was never going to understand these dagoes.

  “Sir William! Come in!” Don Sandoval pulled Bill in through his door, faltering only when he saw his crumpled guards. “My men, they are…?”

  “They merely sleep, suh,” Bill assured him. What on earth was going on?

  “Ah, fine,” said the merchant. Wearing only a long night-shirt, with no rouge on his face and his wizened musket-ball skull unadorned by a perruque, he looked different to Bill: fantastical, vulnerable, old. Bill shuddered, realizing that he must look the same under his own gear. “Forgive my disarray, I am awake early for doing the accounts. And this is your associate?” He shut the heavy door behind Jacob Hop.

  Bill considered the Dutchman with a proud eye. “My protégé.”

  “You will learn much from el Capitán, from Sir William,” the hidalgo advised the Dutchman, then took Bill by the arm and led them both across an unlit drawing room. “Tell me, Sir William,” he said confidentially to Bill, “where have you gone? She is two weeks since I last saw you. I was become worried for you.”

  Hell’s Bells, but the world had gotten strange. Beastkind, talking deaf-mutes, magical French letters, and now this embrace from a man who had tried to kill him.

  Was this a trap?

  Bill hesitated at the threshold to the next room and almost stumbled, but Don Sandoval pulled him onward and Jacob Hop pressed at his heels.

  It made no sense as a trap; if the hidalgo wanted to kill him, he never would have opened the door to him and let him in, especially undressed and unarmed. Or he would have let whatever warding spells he had protecting his house, and he must surely be rich enough to have something, prevent Bill’s entry.

  “I had business with the chevalier, suh,” he said.

  The next room was a study, paneled in dark woods and furnished with a dark wood desk, broad and heavy, an immense armoire of dark wood, dark wood shelves, and a striped orange pelt on the floor that must belong to a tiger. Across the desk lay an open book of scrawled columns of numbers. The light through the window had lost the blue tinge of pre-dawn and now looked clear and yellow, but the room was also lit by a candlestick on the desktop, holding glimmering candles of fine wax on three arms. Don Sandoval stopped and clasped Bill’s hand.

  “I am sorry,” he told Bill. “I did you a great wrong, and I see that you have suffered. You look so thin. You have been in prison, no?”

  Bill dismissed the past with a wave. “Pray do not tell the ladies of New Orleans, suh, or they will be rushing to take the waters of the Pontchartrain Sea.”

  Don Sandoval laughed with delight. “Into the very teeth of death and hell, a true knight casts his defiant jest!”

  A true knight. Bill felt tired, uncomfortable and confused. He was happy that Don Sandoval hadn’t unleashed a pack of thugs against him. On the other hand, this strangely ardent welcome left him disoriented.

  “Don Sandoval,” he began tentatively, “I dislike to trouble you…”

  “I owe you money,” the hidalgo interrupted him. “I should not make a caballero stoop to ask for something as low as recompense.” He released his grip on Bill’s arm and pounced upon his desk, where a raid into a top drawer produced a small purse, tied shut, which he rushed to put into Bill’s hands.

  “Ten Louis d’or,” he said, “as agreed. And ten further Louis d’or, your bonus, as we discussed. And yet another ten Louis d’or as interest, though, like a true gentleman, you said you would not ask for it. But I know your creditors are men without mercy, and you should not suffer because of my delay.”

  Thirty looeys! Bill felt guilt for killing the chevalier’s son, but he had come to ask for the money owed him, because he needed it. Now, with Don Sandoval praising him relentlessly, calling him Sir William and referring to him as a knight, he felt worse about the young frog’s death.

  Hadn’t Judas got thirty looeys for kissing Jesus?

  He couldn’t take the money, but he couldn’t go into the Quarter unarmed, or armed only with the pig-sticker. He’d be eaten alive. He squeezed the purse tightly in his fingers.

  He couldn’t take it. Not for killing an innocent.

  “I find my circumstances changed, suh,” he said slowly, pressing the purse back into Don Sandoval’s hand and closing the old man’s
fingers over it, “such that I cannot accept the money you so generously offer.”

  Don Sandoval looked up at Bill with eyes that were alert, sorrowful, and quizzical. “Please, Capitán Sir William, you have spared my life and I am in your debt. My son…my whole family is in your debt. Tell me how we may repay you.”

  “I do not consider you to be in my debt, suh,” Bill said, astonishing himself.

  The hidalgo looked surprised, too. “But you have come here for something, surely. Must I…shall I speak to the chevalier, and reveal to him that I was the cause of his son’s death?”

  Bill scratched again under his perruque. “Well, suh, as it happens, I am desperately in need of arms. I would be very pleased if you could do me a service, one gentleman to another.”

  “Anything.”

  “I would be honored,” Bill said, “if you could lend me a brace of pistols.”

  “This jest gits worse and worse.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It had been a long time since Bill had set foot inside a church, but Jacob Hop looked about him with a bewilderment that suggested this was his very first visit ever.

  “I have been deceived,” Bill whispered. “I thought the Dutch were great churchgoers.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes. I held the wall in Mobile with a crusty Dutch sergeant named Harmonszoon. He called his gun Old Mortality, and he sat up there on the palisade with me and talked Bible the whole time. In between shooting at the Spanish, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “One day I told him if he was going to quote the Bible all day, at least he could quote the parts with pretty girls in them.”

  “Which parts are those?” Jacob Hop asked.

  Bill shrugged. “Apparently, there aren’t any.”

  They stood by the rood screen that separated the nave and the transepts from the chancel. The roof of the church resounded with an incessant hammering of rain. The cathedral’s interior was faintly illuminated by Bill’s dark lantern, just enough to reveal the images in the building’s stained-glass windows. The seven days of creation ran up one side of the nave, the crucifixion and resurrection ran down the other, and the fall of man, with a Creole-looking Adam and Eve sharing a bright red apple, crowned the apse. More than one New Orleans voice whispered that the Creator depicted in the windows bore a suspicious resemblance to the former bishop, Henri de Bienville.

  Bill had Don Sandoval’s two large-bore pistols stuck in his belt; Jacob Hop wore the chevalier’s sword in its scabbard, hanging down his back from a belt over his shoulder. Hop had let them into the church by “another simple cantrip,” which had neatly unlocked a side door leading from the bare packed-dirt dueling yard behind the cathedral into the apse through a devotional chapel. The chapel housed the most prominent de Bienvilles, including the famous Bishop Henri, who lay in a glass coffin in his red bishop’s robe and cap, marinating in honey. Bill had crossed himself and bowed his head deeply as he passed the bishop’s tomb.

  “This is a mighty god,” Hop said. “That is the message of this building. That its god is the ruler of heaven, earth, all men, and other gods.” He pointed to a gold stand, behind and above the altar, on which rested a pair of crossed small-bore pistols. “He is a vengeful god.”

  “Other gods?” Bill asked.

  Jacob Hop pointed at various stained glass windows. “There the god destroys dragons of the earth and sea and builds creation upon their bodies. There he is accompanied in his work by all the lesser gods, the stars of the night sky. The same gods attend the birth of his son, singing the music of the spheres. And there the servitor gods are arrayed in his worship. See? The one with the key, the one with the sword, the one with the lion, and the one with compass and level?”

  Bill scratched under his perruque. “I’m no theologian, Jake, but you and I don’t see those pictures the same way. Those are Leviathan and Behemoth, they’re monsters that God kills. And those ‘lesser gods’ you’re talking about are the angel choir. And…what did you say, servants? Servitors? Those are Saints Peter and Paul, I believe, and Jerome is the one with the lion. And St. Jeremiah Dixon, I believe, though it’s more ordinary to show St. Jerry alongside Charlie Mason, with his telescope and his loaf of bread.”

  “I do not see any difference,” Hop said stubbornly, “between your understanding and mine.”

  “I suppose you may be right.” Bill was getting used to the Dutchman’s oddities. He believed Jake hadn’t been a deaf-mute at all, he had been taken for one on account of his madness. “Where do you think we should hide?”

  Hop shrugged. “In the little room?”

  Bill frowned. “I believe that might be called the vestry, Jake. It holds vestments, anyway. It’s a fine suggestion, although I think the priest goes there first. We require a vantage point from which we can watch for a few minutes before we’re certain of our target.”

  Hop grinned wide and ran his fingers through his straight blond hair. “Shall I turn us into magpies, and we can watch from the rafters for the bishop to enter?”

  Bill laughed. “I’d be unable to use Don Sandoval’s pistols to any advantage as a magpie,” he said, joining the joke. “Unless, of course, you could turn me into a magpie with hands.”

  Hop frowned good-naturedly. “That would certainly be more difficult.”

  “I’ve stumped the wizard Jacob Hop!” Bill cried in mock triumph. “Well, fear not, Jake, we can secrete ourselves at the platform at the top of this stair. It’s where the priest delivers the homily, and it will give us a good view of the scene. We’ll see immediately, for instance, whether the bishop brings any of his bodyguards.”

  There came a rattle and a click in the darkness, and Bill shuffled toward the stair. “Hurry, Jake, that’s likely the bishop.” They sprang up the steps and hid behind the waist-high balustrade of the preacher’s crenellated perch. Bill shuttered the lantern.

  A new light source entered the cathedral. It came from a transept door, the one facing the bishop’s palace.

  Bill waited.

  He listened for the door; it shut again, and he heard it lock. Then he listened to the footsteps—one man, and not in a hurry. The new arrival walked into the chancel. As Bill had predicted, he went straight to the vestry and began making preparations.

  Bill had never met the Bishop of New Orleans face to face—using his son Etienne as a front man let the bishop maintain his public façade of piety—but he knew what the bishop looked like.

  Now, as the priest went about dressing himself in ceremonial garb and setting out bread and wine for the morning’s rite, Bill eased himself onto the winding stair, took his hat in his hand and snaked one eye up over the bannister to examine the man below.

  It was not the Bishop of New Orleans.

  The man dressing for mass by the light of an oil lantern looked like the bishop, but was younger. He looked something like Etienne, too, but Bill guessed it must be the bishop’s other son. Bill had never had dealings with the man before, he was altogether on the priestcraft side of the family business.

  “Shall we kill him?” Hop’s voice had a note of mischief in it.

  Bill shook his head. “It’s the wrong man,” he whispered. “You can’t just kill anyone you like, Jake. That isn’t good soldiering.”

  “Is it not?”

  “We’re not out to cause random mayhem, Jake, we have a target. If we kill this man, we’ve sprung our trap and the bishop will be warned. If we assassinate the wrong man and the bishop escapes, we’ve fouled it doubly.”

  “Shall we go find the bishop, then?” Hop asked.

  “We stay hidden,” Bill said. “We wait until the bishop comes.”

  “Are you sure he’ll come?”

  “No.” Bill peered over the rail again to be certain they weren’t heard. Their voices sounded loud to him, but the bishop’s son showed no sign of having noticed—the rain on the roof and its loud echo within the cathedral must be masking their noise. “But he’s the bishop, an
d I understand that he says Mass every day. Apparently he doesn’t say the morning Mass, but it might be the midday Mass, so we need to hide ourselves and wait.”

  “And if he never comes into the church today?”

  “I’d rather surprise him here, where he’s out of his home and on the move,” Bill whispered, checking the priest again and finding him still dressing, his back turned to them, “but if the bishop doesn’t come to us, we’ll have to make some plan for breaking into his palace. Perhaps a bribe to a footman, though there we run into the problem of my shortage of funds.”

  Bill shuddered at the thought of that undertaking; the bishop’s palace was a huge building, and it was always full of people. Priests mostly, Polites, he thought—weren’t they the ones who wore red? The thought that the bishop might have a cadre of spell-casting vicars for a bodyguard made Bill very uncomfortable.

  “Can we hide in the chamber below?” Hop sounded eager. “The one full of bones?”

  * * *

  “I don’t understand how a dead man can do magic at all,” Sarah said.

  Sarah had finally had her bath, in a half-barrel tub in a small tiled room in the bishop’s apartment, with Cathy Filmer to keep her company; they had talked little, and Sarah had tried to stick to what they had already told the other woman—that she was here seeking her old family friend, William Lee, on family business. It had helped that Sarah was exhausted; she drifted in and out of sleep in the hot water.

  Picaw and Grungle hadn’t reappeared and the alarm spell Sarah had cast the night before on the riverbank hadn’t been triggered, so Sarah was confident that the Lazars had not yet arrived in New Orleans.