Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  Isabelle swung with an inarticulate cry of fury upon the younger woman and both January and Sylvestre stepped in to head her off.

  ‘I’m sure something can be worked out,’ said January, a sentence which had served him often in good stead at meetings of the Faubourg Tremé Free Colored Militia and Burial Society, but the affronted Isabelle ignored him as if he were a roach on the wall.

  ‘Fine words,’ she jeered, with a haughty stare at Livia, ‘from a woman who was Simon Fourchet’s cane-hand!’ She swept from the room, across the gallery, past her over-laden maid and down the steps, her daughter trotting meekly at her heels. Presumably, reflected January, on her way to take the matter up with Michie Florentin Miragouin, who undoubtedly had troubles of his own.

  ‘And I suspect,’ he added with a sigh, as he descended the fifteen plank steps to ground level a few minutes later and held out a hand to steady Madame Chloë over the uneven path, ‘you’re going to find the same kind of argument going on at the big house, if I may be so bold as to make a guess.’ He frowned at the dark bulk of the building, counting windows, sulfurous with candlelight in the blackness. ‘I wonder if we shouldn’t send Hannibal after her,’ he added after a moment’s thought. ‘He could probably talk her into a better frame of mind.’

  ‘Hannibal could probably have talked Medea into a better frame of mind,’ agreed the tiny woman thoughtfully. ‘And thereby reduced Euripides’ play from a tragedy to a drawing-room farce. But I wouldn’t advise him going after Isabelle Valverde: Florentin Miragouin is rather given to calling people out over trifles. More to build up a reputation as a swordsman than because he really cares who dallies with Isabelle, or with any of his sisters, I think. I heard him say – he came down on the same boat with Henri and myself – that his mother and sisters were talking of coming for the wedding tomorrow. Heaven only knows where my mother-in-law is going to put them.’

  Looking around him at the dense, threatening line of the cipriére, the dark isolation of the cane-fields and the dim smudges of the few lights in the big house, January thought again of what the wedding would have been like had it taken place, like most big French Creole weddings, in town, during the Carnival season that followed the sugar harvest. Not only would it have featured the cruel social ostracism of the bride, but a constant uproar of admonitions from cousins, nephews, connections and the connections of connections – not to speak of harangues by those families – like the Aubins – whose sons had been courting the three unmarried Viellard girls and now stood to lose a substantial portion of their prospective doweries.

  It did not do to speculate aloud on any of this, however, so he followed Chloë Viellard across the kitchen yard towards the house in thoughtful silence.

  Rose, with very real heroism, had volunteered to remain at the weaving house with Dominique and work at smoothing down her mother-in-law’s bristling feathers, while January went with Chloë to confer with Singletary. Hannibal remained behind as well, partly because he was being lodged in the building’s attic with the other musicians and partly because January’s mother had a soft spot in her heart for the fiddler. Most women did.

  As January had feared, acrimonious voices could be heard before he and his companion were halfway to the big house, and against the needles of ruddy light that leaked through the jalousies, dark forms moved like agitated ghosts. There were, he knew, in addition to the four official ‘bedchambers’ in the big house itself, three more rooms that could be pressed into service as such, plus three rooms in each of the wings that extended from the back of the house, which in the usual Caribbean fashion formed a long U which funnelled the river breeze. Counting up Henri’s sisters and mother, Florentin Miragouin and his ten-year-old son, old Basile Aubin – Chloë’s uncle through the Duquilles (And thank God they’re hermits that never go anywhere!) – and his son Evard, who had been somewhat provisionally courting Charlotte, the youngest of the Viellard girls, the situation didn’t look promising.

  And that wasn’t even counting the white ‘friends of the family’: Madame Aurelié’s dear friend and twice-removed cousin old Madame Janvier, Selwyn Singletary, and at least two family lawyers …

  And the situation in the attics, where everybody’s valets and maids would be dossing down on pallets among trunks in the trapped, baking heat, must be nightmarish.

  ‘Ah been in big houses in England, think on, an’ in France an’ Belgium too, where they’d put t’menservants up one side o’ t’house an’ t’lasses in t’other,’ remarked Singletary, shaking his head as January and Chloë climbed the high steps of the gallery outside his room in the upstream wing. ‘’Tis t’first I been where they divvies up t’guests as well. Makes a man think t’Frenchies are no gentlemen.’

  Across the yard, in the other wing, candles flitted along the covered gallery that fronted the rooms given to Henri’s various sisters and to old Sidonie Janvier. Madame Janvier’s pug Thisbe barked excitedly, and elsewhere a shrill voice lifted in a protesting wail, ‘But what are we going to do? You saw how Etienne’s mama looked through me yesterday, as if I weren’t there! I just know she’s going to call off our betrothal!’

  The old man frowned at this, though January wasn’t surprised. Few provident parents would ally their son’s fortunes with a clan whose inner councils were about to be invaded by an American who had no idea how things were properly done. His frown deepened when they went into his room, and Chloë broached the subject of urging Veryl to postpone the wedding. ‘We thrashed this a mickle times afore, nor like. Why you can’t leave t’ poor chap alone …’

  ‘The problem is not that we mistrust the girl.’ Chloë brought out this lie with the earnest innocence acquired by spending far too much time dealing with high French Creole society. ‘But the fact is that as Veryl’s first wife, she would be entitled, on his death, to complete control of his interest in the St-Chinian family assets – and thus in a position to put considerable pressure on Aurelié and myself to sell to a third party.’

  ‘Ah know, ah know! But …’

  ‘It may indicate an unladylike attitude of suspicion on my part,’ she continued, ‘but personally, I’d like to have time to be certain that Madamoiselle Ellie is really as isolated as she appears. To know there’s no father or uncle or brother who might think she’s more useful to him as Veryl’s widow, than as Veryl’s wife.’

  Singletary cogitated on this for a time. ‘Ah see where you’re drivin’, think on,’ he agreed at length, as January read his pulse, and gently tapped his joints. ‘But t’will stir a rare puther, callin’ a halt now, wi’ parson on his way an’ t’ garlands all goin’ up. Veryl, he’s had it to here—’ he touched his sparse white eyebrows – ‘wi’ folk pullin’ an’ clackin’ at him. ‘Tis why he come here to wed t’lass in t’first place.’

  He stepped to the French door of his little chamber, and looked down the gallery toward the main house. Where the back gallery of the larger building joined the wing, January could just make out two forms sitting on a bench. In the dense shadow the blur of an old man’s long white hair was just discernable. Less visible still, the murky glow of a couple of mosquito-smudges caught the woman’s blonde curls and the perfect oval of her face.

  ‘He been reet good to me,’ said the Yorkshireman in a softer voice. ‘Takin’ me in when I was that poorly, an’ seein’ to it I had you t’ look to me, Mr J. Last thing he needs is me of all people tellin’ him to put t’lass aside, same as all t’others. An’ her so sweet an’ pretty. She’d ne’er do him a wrong.’

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t.’ Chloë handed the old man his shabby red silk waistcoat, and held it for him like a valet as he slipped his arms through the holes. ‘But in truth, the last thing he needs is a wife he deeply loves either betraying him with a lover – if she’s been put up to this by some family we don’t know about – or, God forbid, triggering his murder. There are monstrous people in the world, M’sieu. You know this.’

  He was silent for a time. Remembering – January guesse
d – the innocent-looking young woman who’d drugged him and committed him to a madhouse for months to keep him out of the way of her own schemes.

  And who had poisoned him there.

  ‘Ah know’t,’ sighed the old man at last. ‘Ah, lassie.’ He put a thin arm around Chloë’s shoulders. ‘Best we wait til they got yon dower-house redded, an’ Miss Trask gone over to’t.’ He nodded at the ant-like stream of grumbling servants who, through the entire conversation, had been coming and going along the crushed shell path that led back from the yard through the darkness toward the Casita’s candle-lit bulk. ‘I’ll not tell Veryl we think t’girl’s lyin’, not whilst she’s standin’ there—’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Will ye come let me know, Mr J?’ Singletary turned to him, and waved aside the coat January held out to him. ‘Shippin’ down-river, an’ comin’ here, has wore me out, an’ that’s a fact. I think I’d be t’ better for lyin’ down a bit—’

  ‘I was just going to suggest that, sir.’ Though the candle-gleam in the room behind them warmed the old man’s face somewhat, January still thought he looked haggard. A breath of clammy wind, stirring in from the Gulf, shook the cypresses around the house and made the curtains belly eerily. Rain coming, he guessed. Rose, brought up in the Barataria further south, had said earlier that it spoke of storms at sea. ‘I’m sorry this has to be done tonight,’ he added quietly. ‘But I’m afraid I agree with Madame Chloë. I’m very fond of Michie Veryl, and I should hate to see him hurt. I’ll let you know, as soon as I see them go over.’

  As he descended the steps he had to stand aside to let the overseer Molina pass, like an overgrown, sullen boar in his rough coat of mustard-colored tweed. He was trailed by four slaves, in the coarse rags of field hands, burdened with tubs of water from the cistern. ‘Get on there, you lazy niggers, we ain’t got all the night!’

  The men had undoubtedly been in the cane-fields since sun-up. One of them had a blotted line of blood soaking through the back of his shirt.

  The first spatters of rain flecked January’s cheek. Candle-flame crept and crawled from window to window of the Casita in the darkness, like the last glowing ember-worms in a near-dead hearth, and in the women’s wing a girl’s voice lifted again, ‘If he marries that puta, nobody is going to marry any of us!’

  Loudly enough, January guessed, for the couple sitting in the dark of the gallery nearby to hear.

  And won’t that improve Veryl’s readiness to postpone the wedding …

  Far-off thunder rumbled in the tarry darkness.

  It would be, he reflected, a very long night.

  FIVE

  The conflict at the weaving house had calmed down by the time January climbed its steps again. In only one room were candles still burning, and by the pallets set along the walls he guessed that this had been turned into a sort of dormitory for a number of the plaçeés. Around a small table near the open French doors sat January’s mother, Hannibal, old Laetitia St-Chinian, and Solange Aubin, playing whist. Isabelle Valverde had returned and was sitting on one of the pallets with a slender, handsome young woman whom January guessed to be Nicolette Charpentier, the mistress of the Viellard family lawyer, complaining – rather loudly – about the thieving ways of their maids and playing écarté.

  The maidservant Valla stood just inside the doorway, a willow basket on her hip and an expression of bitter annoyance on her face.

  ‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ said Dominique, making tea over a little chafing-dish that January guessed she’d brought in her luggage. Judging by the paper sack near the hearth beside her, she’d brought the charcoal for this operation as well. ‘Ordinarily, of course my dear, Bergette would be delighted to help you, but poor Charmian is being a complete little wretch tonight, and it’s more than poor silly Musette – the nurse, you know – is able to cope with.’

  ‘And I hope you don’t think I’m going to lend you Mirelle,’ put in Solange Aubin, with a malicious glance at the infuriated maid. ‘Quite apart from the fact that others besides your mistress need hot water and assistance in brushing their clothes and hair, like dear little Charmian, my precious Stanislas can not get to sleep unless Mirelle is with him … And his physician said that sleep is absolutely vital to one of his delicate constitution.’

  With artful insouciance, she adjusted a fold of her purple silk tignon.

  ‘We will of course,’ added Livia sweetly, ‘lend you a couple of pitchers to fetch water from the cistern.’

  Valla’s mouth opened to snap some reply, then at the sound of January’s step behind her she swung around and thrust the basket into his hands. ‘You,’ she said brusquely. ‘Make yourself useful. Fetch me some charcoal from the stores, and a couple of pails of water—’

  She clearly took him for somebody’s valet. January put the basket on his arm, and half-bowed. ‘At your service, m’am.’ He glanced sidelong at his mother, wryly entertained by the conflict plain on her face: the satisfaction of putting down an ‘uppity’ maid would of course involve admitting that she had a son who had flecks of gray in his short-cropped hair, but whose ebony complexion announced that at some point in her life she’d had sexual congress with an African-born field hand.

  But it was Dominique who said, ‘Valla, dearest, I don’t think you’ve met my brother Benjamin? P’tit—’ this to January – ‘you can go sleep up in the attic with the musicians if you want to, but you’d be perfectly welcome in the next room with Sylvestre and his sons, you know.’

  Livia Levesque sorted her cards with the air of one who has no connection whatsoever with the conversation around her, but Solange and Isabelle hid snickers at Valla’s startled chagrin. The maidservant snatched the basket back, but made no effort to apologize to January for mistaking him for a servant. Like many of the fair-complexioned plaçeés, she seemed to assume that anyone that much darker than herself should have been a slave.

  Another step sounded on the gallery, and as January looked behind him to see who it was – a man’s step, he thought it might be Sylvestre – Valla brushed past him and snapped, ‘Luc, you take that water over to the Casita for Madamoiselle Ellie.’ Her French was good, but it was white folks’ French, not the half-African patois of the Louisiana slaves. ‘Then I want you to get charcoal from the stores and start up a fire in the pantry, and look sharp about it.’

  The voice from the darkness that responded, ‘Yes, Valla,’ was young, but there was a note of exhaustion in it. January recalled Michie Molina’s harsh commands, and the spots of blood on the back of one of the water-bearers.

  ‘That water was brought for us, girl,’ cut in Livia angrily. ‘As members of the family we are entitled to some consideration,’ and January politely retrieved the basket from Valla’s arm, forestalling her next remark.

  ‘No reason I can’t fetch your mistress’ charcoal for you, Madamoiselle,’ he said to her, in his best English, furthering her discomfiture (and causing his mother to smile smugly). He removed his coat, laid it over the back of the kitchen-chair in which his mother sat, and stepped out into the darkness of the gallery once more.

  The tall bulk of the water-carrier moved aside from him – nearly his own great height, and smelling of the sweat and earth of the cane-field – and that soft youthful voice murmured, ‘Thank you, Michie. But you don’t gotta—’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ retorted January, reverting to cane-patch French. ‘Quicker we gets that place fixed up the quicker everybody can get to bed. Who do I ask about the charcoal? Where’s it kept?’

  ‘M’am Molina got the sto’house keys. You take the path toward the landin’ an Michie Molina’s house there on your left.’

  It never hurt, January had long ago learned, to establish friendly relations with the servants, though in Valla’s case it was clear that Dominique was right: the girl definitely shared the common plaçeé attitude that her fair complexion put her well above those as dark as himself and Luc.

  Which would have put an extra layer of tension, he g
uessed, on her dealings with the overseer and his wife. Molina was a little darker than she, though he could still have passed himself off as a Spaniard if it hadn’t been for his features. Madame Molina, still arrayed – when he reached the overseer’s cottage – in what was obviously her Sunday-best puce silk frock, was definitely of African parentage, though in defiance of custom she wore her thick, slightly frizzy honey-blonde hair like a white woman’s rather than in a tignon. The daughter or granddaughter of a plaçeé, January guessed, either here or on Sainte-Domingue before the Rebellion, and not pretty enough to aspire to plaçage herself. Despite African features her eyes, by the light of her kitchen lamp, were bright blue.

  She clicked her tongue that a guest of the family should undertake so menial a chore as fetching charcoal. ‘And for such a one!’ She shook her head as she led him to the storehouses behind the plain little dwelling, mounted like everything else in Plaquemines Parish on six-foot brick piers. ‘Who knows what scandal that Irlandaise is going to bring to the family, eh?’

  In the shadows among the piers beneath the storehouse, January made out a large number of hogsheads, the huge barrels in which sugar was taken to market. The first two rows of these were filled with what appeared to be branches of oak and cypress. Only when Madame Molina’s lantern-light played across them did January see that the boughs were twined with ribbon, and punctuated with over-large satin bows.

  ‘Coming down here all in a clap,’ Madame went on, leading the way across the yard, ‘and holding a wedding – and such a wedding, my God! As well none of the family are here …’

  By the exasperation in her voice January guessed that either Guillaume Molina or his wife was also ‘one of the family’. The position of overseer was a not uncommon way of providing for the sons of cousins or uncles or brothers, if they weren’t closely enough related – like old Sylvestre – for land to be turned over to them outright. As overseer of Cold Bayou plantation, Molina would have a position for life, if he proved efficient and trustworthy. Sugar was a hellishly hard crop, and it took a hard man to control those forced to labor in the fields.