Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘I don’t see why it should matter,’ declared Aurelié.

  ‘It isn’t important. If you will excuse me, ladies, one of the first things I should like to do here is verify whether the poor woman was raped as well as killed.’

  Madame Aurelié’s face contracted with appalled disgust at the thought, and she turned her back. Her daughter-in-law simply stepped aside to give January more room in which to work, folded her little hands, and watched with scientific interest.

  Valla had not been raped. But by the slight bruising around the vagina it was clear that she had had intercourse not more than a day previously. And the struggle with her murderer was written on her body: her nails broken, the single deep stab under her ribs on the right side accompanied by smaller cuts on her palms and fingers, and slashes that made January think she’d been wriggling like a landed fish while her attacker tried to get in a killing blow. There was a deep slash on her left side – as if she’d gotten herself turned facing her assailant – and this may have doubled her up so that he could grab her hair, and cut her throat.

  His late-night waking came back to mind, hearing music in the darkness from the big house, and wondering if it was the cry of a night bird that had startled him.

  What time had that been?

  The musicians were still playing …

  Valla’s muscles had been sufficiently relaxed that someone – probably Hecuba – had been able to undress her. Her neck, jaw, fingers and wrists were stiff. The pale ivory skin of which she’d been so proud showed wide patches of coagulated subcutaneous blood on her sides and the small of her back.

  ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Old Nana,’ replied Chloë. ‘One of the women in the quarters. She has trap-lines on the bayou and went out to check them when the men were rallied to work. She ran to the work-gang who were just going out to the field only a few hundred yards from where Valla was lying. M’sieu Molina sent Luc running back to tell the house.’

  Midnight? One in the morning? Valla’s eyes were open, the eyelids stiffened that way before anyone could force them closed. The whites were clouded. Her throat was bruised, not heavily enough to indicate strangulation. He seized her, he thought. Held her by the neck and stabbed her …

  He took up her hands, fine-boned but callused, and saw traces of something brown beneath her nails. Even with his magnifying lens, the fragments he tweezed out were too tiny for him to tell whether this was skin – a black man’s skin – or the leather of gloves.

  Yes, she’d clawed at his hands or arms.

  ‘Can the wench be trusted?’ Madame Aurelié had turned around again by this time and was watching him narrowly.

  A silly question, he thought, and Chloë said, ‘Old Nana? I can’t imagine why she’d lie.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ The older woman’s eyebrows quirked upwards. ‘They all do. Madame Molina tells me that last night that thieving trader False River Jones was out on the bayou. Half the field hands were sneaking out with goods they’d stolen, she says: the tea I’d brought from town and the good napkins and pillowcases. I daresay this girl was one of them, and the woman who found her may have been on her way back from a rendezvous with the trader as well.’ She turned her chilly blue eyes on January. ‘Can you tell who did this thing?’

  ‘Not at the moment, m’am, no.’ He rose stiffly from his stool and bowed a little as he said it – he wanted to shake her for her nosiness but a lifetime of restraint told him this would not be a good idea – and limped out of the little tent and over to the chair where Valla’s clothing lay spread.

  Someone, he reflected, had shown a good deal of sense. Folding could have confused the outlines of the bloodstains, rubbed the patches of mud against clean cloth.

  No tignon, he noticed at once. Her hair was braided as if she had been wearing one, but many white women – including Ellie Trask – braided theirs before bed. Or was that beautifully-wrapped confection of yellow and white lying somewhere, half-ground into the mud and pickerel-weed?

  Huge blots of blood marked the left side where the knife had been driven in under her ribs, and the right side just behind the right breast. That wound was a gash rather than a simple stab, as if she’d turned her body even as it was inflicted. By the rent in the heavy linen of the corset, the ripping knife had been stopped by the corset-bone.

  Even the sleeves, where glancing blows had caught her as she’d struggled, were heavily daubed and smeared.

  He seized her by the throat from behind, and stabbed her in the side. But she turned, and the blow wasn’t mortal. As if he could see her, he knew she’d twisted in her killer’s grip, raked at his hands trying to get free. He’d cut at her again, and again, until he landed one strong enough to make her stagger. By the way the cut flesh of her throat gaped, and the pattern of the blood down the breast of her dress, it looked like he’d held her by the hair against him, and cut her throat from behind.

  How much blood would that leave on a man’s sleeves and breast?

  Beside the bench a tin bullseye lantern lay on the floor. ‘Was this near her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Chloë said. ‘I think so.’

  Had the victim been a white woman, reflected January wearily – even Mamzelle Ellie, whom everyone on the plantation had been wishing would be murdered since their arrival – somebody would have made damn sure to observe the place and keep track of things more carefully than this.

  ‘I’d like to see where it happened.’ He began to limp toward the back gallery steps. Beyond them, visible past the shadows of the gallery, sudden wind shook the woods, barely a dozen yards from the back of the Casita, with a noise like the pounding of rain. Spectral streamers of Spanish moss groped at the air.

  Before January could reach the steps the house door opened behind him and a Hibernian voice called, ‘Hey, boy-o! You’ll be Ben that’s a doctor, then?’

  ‘That’ll be me.’

  The Black Duke spit tobacco on the gallery planks, said, ‘Miss Ellie’s askin’ after yez.’ And he jerked his thumb to the shadows of the house at his back.

  January expected to find Uncle Mick at the young woman’s side, but he was wrong. Only Veryl sat perched on the threadbare yellow upholstery of the couch where the wedding dress had been draped yesterday. Even the Black Duke disappeared onto the front gallery. Ellie, beautiful in a gown of rose-colored silk, paused in her pacing as January entered. Her face maintained its composure, but was chalky under the rouge.

  ‘Mr St-Chinian tells me you found the men who murdered his nephew a few years ago.’

  ‘I did, yes. I couldn’t testify against them in court – they were white – but they were engaged in other illegal activities and came to grief just the same. But I had nothing to do with that, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘I can – we can … Uncle Mick can …’ She stumbled a little over the words. ‘Whoever did this … They’ll be punished for it, won’t they? I mean, it’s still murder in this state to kill a slave, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ returned January quietly.

  ‘I think she really was only killed by accident,’ said Veryl quietly. ‘They – whoever did this – thought it was you.’

  Ellie turned her face quickly aside, and her movement wafted to January, again the reek of plum brandy. His eyes went to the open door of her room. A square cut-glass bottle stood on the table beside the bed. A pong of alcohol hung in the air.

  ‘Even if you were the intended target, Mamzelle,’ he said, ‘whoever stabbed Valla is guilty of murder, though I doubt that any court in Louisiana will hang them for it. My guess is they’ll be fined … for robbing you of your property.’

  Her eyes went to his at the words, and he tried to read what was in them. But he couldn’t tell – couldn’t see whether it was in her mind that, according to Valla, at least, she had a claim that he was her property. Or had this, if it was even true, been thrust from her mind by grief, terror, and rage?

  She looked away again. ‘Find them.’ She put her hand brie
fly to her lips. ‘Whoever did this … They’ll come after me next, won’t they? Everybody looks at me …’

  ‘Whoever did this,’ said January evenly, ‘was probably appalled to learn that it wasn’t you they killed. I suspect they would have dumped her body in the bayou, if False River Jones and God knows how many of his customers hadn’t been out there. The bayou’s less than a hundred feet from the Casita, behind a screen of trees. Now he – or she – the killer – has shown his hand. You know now that someone is prepared to use violence against you. And that may mean that whoever it is, will hang back and bide his time.’

  ‘Bide his time …’ she whispered.

  ‘Giving us time to get away,’ agreed Uncle Veryl eagerly, rising to his feet and wrapping his arms around his beloved. ‘I’m sure Père Eugenius will understand, when he arrives. I’ll have the flag put out on the landing for the Louisiana Belle—’

  As if in answer – or as if the sky were jeering at these plans – the wind snarled suddenly around the corner of the house and somewhere a casement banged loudly. Something – it sounded like a torn-off tree-branch – slammed into the house with brutal force, making Veryl flinch. Ellie’s eyes widened at the sound, but she didn’t turn and cling to him. Fear seemed to have knocked away all the arts and pretenses she’d used – to whatever degree she’d used them – and January had the impression of seeing, for the first time, the real young woman beneath the veils of sweetness and artifice.

  Tougher than the girl who’d shivered and bewailed the death of her worthy and hard-working father. Thoughts fleeted behind those lovely brown eyes, watchful now and calculating which way she’d better run.

  ‘Will boats be running, in this weather?’ She looked back at January. ‘And if we run – if they are running – won’t that mean … Well, whoever wants to kill me before I marry Mr St-Chinian will want to kill me even worse after I do it, won’t they?’

  ‘Mignonne,’ pleaded the old man, tightening his embrace. ‘Don’t say such things! That’s what they want you to think! Trying to frighten you! Trying to scare you away!’

  ‘Well, they’re succeeding.’ Ellie’s brow pinched at another thought, and her eyes flooded with tears. ‘You don’t think – Mr J … You don’t think they just … just killed Valla to warn me off, do you? If like you said all they’ll get is a fine for destroying my property …’

  Her voice twisted on those last words, but Veryl put in quickly, ‘Surely not!’

  The pantry door at the back of the parlor opened, and – to January’s startled surprise – Uncle Mick’s demure-eyed butler St-Ives entered, bearing a tray of lemonade and some freshly-baked teacakes, presumably prepared in the hopes of a belated wedding today.

  His heart seemed to contract in his chest: what the hell?

  Did that mean Hannibal and Rose were lying dead in a swamp somewhere?

  Or … What?

  Not an iota could be guessed from looking at the man’s inscrutable face.

  Veryl’s voice continued, ‘It is still murder in this state to kill a slave, especially someone else’s slave. I’m going to get you out of here, my child. On the next boat that comes along – thank you, St-Ives, that will be all – and we can be married in town. You’ll be safe in town.’

  ‘Will I?’ Ellie whispered despairingly.

  January thrust aside his panic, forced his mind back to the events that had actually taken place, as Veryl poured the lemonade, pressed the tumbler into the girl’s unsteady hands. He had to forcibly remind himself of what he had said yesterday: Let’s see what we’re talking about, before we do anything.

  In his mind, January heard his friend, the Kentucky hunter Abishag Shaw, when he, January, had once faced flight with Rose from an unknown killer: The hunter has all the advantage. Even knowin’ your hunter’s name – even knowin’ his face – in a town the size of New Orleans, you don’t know which way he’s comin’ at you til he’s on your back.

  Even in the slow season, New Orleans was a beehive of activity, of busy crowds into which a killer could blend like a fox in long grass. In a few months, winter fogs would cover the city like a blanket.

  In New Orleans, a killer could wait.

  Counting the slaves in the quarters there were about a hundred and fifty people on Cold Bayou. There were over a hundred thousand in New Orleans. He thought he saw this statistic in Ellie’s face, but couldn’t say aloud the corollary: It’ll be easier to catch him – or her – if you stay here, and encourage them to try again.

  So he said nothing. Later he wondered if the outcome would have been different, if he had.

  Instead he asked, ‘Was Valla here when you got back last night?’

  Ellie nodded. ‘That is, she was asleep,’ she explained. ‘The dancing went on at the house until … I don’t know, two?’ She turned to Veryl, winced again as another gust of wind slammed some other fragment of debris against the swamp-side windows of the little house.

  The old man tightened his hold tenderly about her, and again January saw the slight twist of her body, impatient, as if she really wanted to break free rather than bury her face in his shoulder.

  ‘It was past two,’ said Uncle Veryl. ‘James and I walked back up here with Madamoiselle, with lanterns. Because of that unpleasantness with the voodoo marks the doors were latched. A veilleuse was burning here in the parlor, and in each of the bedrooms. James went in with Madamoiselle and shone his lantern around the parlor and the bedroom.’

  ‘I looked into Valla’s room,’ said Ellie. ‘She was asleep in bed. Well, the mosquito-bar was down over the bed, anyway, and I could see her through it.’

  ‘Has anything in the room been touched?’

  The young woman looked a little surprised at the question, and shook her head.

  ‘May I?’

  Ellie and Uncle Veryl followed him to the shut door of the maid’s bedroom. The casement banged again as January opened the door, and Ellie exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ Wind billowed the mosquito-bar over the narrow bed, and through the ghostly white tent of gauze a figure could be made out, and a rumple of blonde hair on the pillow. But even the stormy daylight showed in the next instant that the sheets had been humped over a bolster to counterfeit a body beneath them, and the hair was an assortment of Ellie’s false switches, cunningly arrayed. In darkness, and behind the netting, it would have been impossible to accurately distinguish their pale honey-gold from the richer – and only slightly darker – caramel hue of Valla’s hair.

  January limped around the bed to the window that faced the woods, and caught the casement as the wind hurled it closed again. The sky to the southwest was a gray turmoil of cloud, and warm rain splattered against his cheek, like a white man’s derisive spit.

  ‘You know she had a lover here at Cold Bayou?’

  ‘I know Antoine pestered her,’ said Ellie, who had not moved from the doorway. ‘She said he kept on at her, the way men do: “You used to let me, why won’t you let me now?”’ She caught herself in the midst of this cynical observation, glanced at Veryl, and swiftly donned the mantle of confused innocence again – widened eyes, slight pucker to the brows. ‘That’s what all those awful girls said, that lived down the street from Papa.’ And she covered her mouth for a moment, the gesture of a schoolgirl who fears she’s said something naughty in ignorance.

  Judging by Uncle Veryl’s face, he gulped that one down like a dog swallowing a lump of cheese.

  Even for a white man, that’s naïve. No wonder he still thinks she’s a virgin.

  ‘You think he might have persuaded her?’

  To January’s surprise, Ellie’s pallor pinkened suddenly into a very genuine blush, and again she looked aside. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I know you … I know a girl can tell herself she’s never going to … never going to look at this man or that man … and then you see him again, by chance, and it … it all comes back.’ She raised her eyes to his, and in those doe-like depths he thought he saw the quick glimmer of tears, quickly blinked
away.

  ‘She might have,’ she concluded in a tiny voice, and January had the feeling that it wasn’t about Valla that she spoke.

  He thought of the maid’s bruised genitals. Of the way Antoine had waited for her in front of the house Tuesday morning, had caught her arm.

  Of the power an overseer had on an isolated plantation like this one.

  Rape and consent were always tricky questions, when the woman concerned wasn’t truly free. Pull up your skirts or I’ll tell your mistress I caught you sellin’ her pearls to False River Jones …

  ‘Do you think she’d have been trying to run away?’

  With her hair dressed like a white woman’s – rather than hidden by a tignon – Valla could easily have passed for white, once she was out of the slave-states where people looked twice at girls of ivory complexion.

  ‘No!’ Ellie’s eyes grew wide as if the thought had never occurred to her. ‘Oh, no! For one thing,’ she pointed out, with a shrewdness January guessed she usually hid from her inamoratus, ‘none of my jewelry was missing. I mean, Valla’s own jewelry – her gold cross and chain, and a gold bracelet she had – those were gone, stolen from her body—’ anger momentarily hardened her face – ‘but even if she sold those, she wouldn’t have got far. But nothing was gone from my jewel box, and I keep pretty good track of …’

  She glanced quickly at Veryl, who was looking a little shocked at her matter-of-fact tone, and widened her eyes again. ‘I remember every single piece you’ve ever given me, beloved.’ He looked mollified.

  ‘Besides,’ she added, turning back to January, ‘there was no need for Valla to run away. I was going to free her. After the wedding. She knew that.’

  January raised his brows.

  Uncle Veryl nodded. ‘I offered her the choice,’ he said. ‘For me to pay the bond for her to remain in the state and continue to work for us, or passage to New York and two hundred dollars, for a start in life.’