Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘Old or young?’

  Gopher merely kicked him – hard – but the Duke pushed his hat forward to scratch his head, and asked, ‘What’s it to yez?’ He bent down to drag the chair upright. ‘Damn, yer a heavy nigger.’

  ‘It’s the weight of the world on my shoulders,’ said January tiredly, and the man laughed.

  ‘I think one of them may have had something to do with what happened to Miss Trask,’ he went on quietly. ‘I came here looking for further clues.’

  ‘Aargh, tell me another one, daddy,’ urged M’Gurk scornfully.

  Duke said, ‘Arrh, shove it up yer arse, Gopher,’ and looked back at January with his head cocked a little, inquiring. ‘What makes ye think so?’ With his pockmarked face turned a little to the light he wasn’t an encouraging sight.

  ‘Little things,’ said January. ‘I think somebody came into the Casita last night and put poison in the brandy bottle beside the bed. I think Miss Trask became sick and disoriented, and staggered outside into the storm. I won’t know anything until her body is found, because someone came in and cleaned up all marks and traces—’

  ‘Yeah, someone like you …’ jeered Gopher, and stepped aside as Trask emerged onto the gallery again.

  ‘There’s no note in there,’ said the Irishman quietly. ‘Nuttin’ at all. Nor would there be, my friend. Me girl couldn’t read.’

  January said, ‘I know.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  There wasn’t room in the larger rowboat for Uncle Mick, all the boys, and their prisoner as well, so Visigoth was left at the Casita while the Irishmen redistributed themselves and January – his hands bound before him and supported by Gopher M’Gurk and Black Duke Monohan rather than by the stick he’d used in his bedside visit to Jules Mabillet – in both vessels. The Duke searched him, but when January cautioned, ‘Don’t touch the spoons – they may have poison on them,’ the big man let them be, without asking how he knew this or where he’d acquired them.

  He did, however, help himself to January’s silver watch.

  Visigoth’s lantern glimmered on the porch next to his tall form in the darkness as the little Hibernian armada made its way back to the wood store. From all January could tell by that faint flickering glow, the floodwaters had not begun to subside by so much as an inch.

  Gopher went into the loft first with one of the lanterns and January heard him exclaim ‘Gah!’ in alarm and disgust. ‘Somebody been in here, boss!’

  Trask, the Black Duke, and the other two thugs followed, dragging January clumsily after them. Their lantern-light wavered over the design wrought of black chalk and brick-dust on the floor around the kingpost, where January’s chain still lay coiled.

  Trask said, ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Voodoo,’ said January shortly, with a grimace of annoyed distaste. ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘It some kind of curse, then?’ Gopher asked hesitantly. ‘For killin’ Miss Ellie an’ M’am Viellard?’

  ‘I didn’t kill them,’ retorted January. ‘Let them curse. To a Christian it means nothing.’ He took care to back off, not touching the wide band of scribbled symbols – snakes and crosses, eyes and valentine-hearts, with arrows pointing outward, to the four points of the compass – as the Irishmen hesitated to come near.

  ‘Those designs in black,’ he added after a moment in a careless voice, ‘they’re the summons to Ogon, the god of war and violence. That thing that looks like a file, that’s his footprint. The red are curse marks, to trap the soul so that Ogon may come on him for vengence.’ He pointed. ‘Those two red arrows, those are the gate, through which Papa Legba, the father of magic, permits the curse to enter. The black arrows in the other three directions are gates that are closed.’

  Gopher and Rags crossed themselves. Somewhere in Heaven, January supposed, the priests who’d schooled them in childhood cried aloud in astonished beatific joy. Trask raised a heavy brow, and said, ‘As a good Christian man, you got any objection to sittin’ down on that thing?’

  And he walked across it, to pick up the spancel and chain.

  Black Duke and Gopher, supporting January on either side, would clearly rather not have stepped on those interlinking paths of sigils, but January limped deliberately over to the kingpost, forcing his attendants to follow. Leaning his back to the thick oak, he sank to the floor, feeling as if he’d been run over by a wagon. The blows from Trask’s fists and stick, on top of the bruises left by his fall from the gallery, had begun to swell and throb and he felt giddy from the pain in his much-maltreated ankle.

  Trask locked the manacle around his wrist before cutting free the clothes-rope.

  ‘I am flattered,’ said January wearily, ‘that you consider me worth taking all those precautions.’

  ‘Ah, Ben.’ The Irishman smiled with a deadly glitter in his eye. ‘You think I don’t see you’re the kind as lays low and waits his chance, like a fox waitin’ for the hounds to run by? On the ship for Australia I strangled a warder in me chain, after playin’ so sick he thought I didn’t bear watchin’. I took the key off him so me mates and I could take the jolly-boat two days’ rowin’ back to Castletown, an’ I don’t trust you far as me boys can throw you.’

  ‘Do you trust me enough to drag over a couple of pieces of wood for me to put my foot up on?’ asked January tiredly. ‘And maybe to have Molina send over something to drink and a couple of pones of cornbread in the morning?’

  Trask snapped his fingers, and the Black Duke rolled a stumpy chunk of wood toward them, across those enigmatic lines of red and black.

  ‘Any thought on who’d think you’d done the deed?’ he asked. ‘That would put such a mallacht on a Christian man like yoursel’?’

  January shook his head. ‘You,’ he pointed out, and Trask’s grin widened.

  They took the lanterns, and left him alone in the darkness. He listened to the creak of their oar-locks retreating across the water, and wondered if any of them would think to row back to the Casita for Visigoth.

  Then he waited, listening to the scratch and scurry of rat-feet in the dark.

  Death in the water, Olympe had said.

  Death in the fire.

  If I try to flee now morning will bring pursuit, and, almost certainly, death. He knew he couldn’t talk his way out of it twice.

  But the night, he knew, would be long.

  At length he judged it safe to fish the stump of candle from an inner pocket, and the little box of friction-matches from another. By the wavery light he studied the ring of black and red designs which surrounded the kingpost.

  They had, of course, absolutely nothing to do with curses. He scarcely needed the gridwork symbol of Ogon – the blacksmith-god in his more peaceable moods – to tell him that a file had been cached in the piled wood, pointed at by the two red arrows. And though he was fairly certain that the stylized drawing of a boat in another corner of the ‘vévé’ didn’t indicate an actual boat, he was fairly certain that something which could be used to paddle away from the wood store floated just under the floor of the loft.

  All the musicians knew his sister was a voodoo. They’d know he could read these signs.

  Propping himself on a billet of wood, he dragged himself to the area indicated by the red arrows and yes, there was a file, tucked in between the cut branches stored up for the winter’s roulaison. As he was turning back toward the kingpost his eye caught the fact that the latrine-bucket, which he’d left standing a foot or so from the wood not far away, had been moved. Pushed deep into a sort of niche formed by the uneven lengths of the logs.

  Moving it out, he found a second file, shoved under the wood at floor level. With it were two gourds of water, a knife, and a small sack containing about two dollars in assorted coin.

  The Cold Bayou slaves might not know the formal signs of the loa, he reflected, smiling. But like the loa, they, too, looked after those who needed help against The Man.

  The question was – he lay down again, propped his foot on the chunk of wood
– whether to run or not.

  How far can I get in a night? Not to New Orleans, that’s for sure. Nor to anyplace where there’ll be friends to help. He still had Rose’s compass, strung on its slender ribbon around his neck, but more likely than not the ciprière was stiff with the slave stealers who prowled the swamps, just waiting for slaves to risk escape in the confused conditions of a flood.

  How long before steamboats start running again on the flooded river?

  Fairly soon, despite the hugely increased danger from snags and tow-heads. Every merchant in town knows that after twenty-four hours, everybody south of English Turn will be willing to pay triple prices for foodstuffs, not to mention for passage north to higher ground.

  He closed his eyes against a wave of faintness and pain.

  Is waiting for Hannibal – with whatever information he may have found, which Trask may or may not dispute – safer than setting off in darkness into the swamp?

  The days were past – thankfully – when he’d have wondered whether Hannibal would choose this particular occasion to go on one of his whiskey-and-laudanum benders.

  He would be here as soon as it was humanly possible, that much January knew.

  If Trask learns tomorrow that one of his jailers found only the cut manacle, he’ll have his boys out searching in earnest. Then God help me if I’m caught.

  The thought of the sheer physical exertion involved in flight – of both the pain and the likelihood of unforseen complications from his lack of mobility – nearly nauseated him.

  On the other hand, God preserve me from whatever scheme is going to come into Uncle Mick’s mind after half a bottle of bourbon following dinner tonight.

  It comes down to this, thought January wearily.

  Can I trust a) fate or b) white people?

  With a sigh he sat painfully up, removed his foot from its improvised stool and set his shackled wrist on it, and started filing.

  This turned out to be a fortunate decision. He’d cut more than halfway through the manacle – the cheap iron was relatively soft, and rusty as well – when he heard, through the distant throb of cicadas and bullfrogs, the creak of oar-locks across the water. He snuffed his candle instantly and slipped both files into the pockets of his jacket. He had not the slightest idea what time it was – he couldn’t have gotten near enough to the window for a clear look at the sky, which was partly overcast and in any case hidden by the eave – but the sounds from the big house had ceased some time ago. Now and then voices still drifted from the weaving house, indistinguishable with distance, but he knew his colleagues routinely stayed up half the night.

  Coming to get me?

  There were only two boats on the property – not counting whatever his colleagues had hidden under the loft floor for him to escape on – and no whites were going to leave one of them anywhere for the convenience of the Other Side of the Family.

  Charlotte? Is Jules worse?

  But from what he could see through the window, no flakes of lantern-light splattered the dark surface of the waters even as the boat drew closer.

  Moonlight through the clouds. But Visigoth – or whoever Charlotte would have blackmailed or threatened to be her galley-crew – wouldn’t be likely to steer by it if they had a choice.

  Looking out into the steely darkness, one shade lighter than the black of the loft, he thought he could see movement.

  Then the blazing glare of fire, the reek of burning pitch, and a fireball was hurled in through the window with such violence that it rolled clear across the loft floor and into the wood piled at the far side.

  ‘Shit—’

  January pulled the file from his pocket, scraped – twice – at the deep groove he’d already hacked in the spancel, but it was terrifying how swiftly the flames spread. They licked through the heaped wall of wood, spread onto the rafters – evoking a stream of rats, raccoons, lizards, and squirrels down the far wall and out through the window – and the air smote him with an oily heat.

  Somebody heard I’d been out to the Casita, poking around …

  Smoke poured from the wood, burning his eyes and his lungs. Minutes, only, he thought …

  He laid his shackled wrist on the wood again, dug the second file from his pocket and angled both files so that they formed a V through the ring, like scissors. He bunched his shackled fist tight, partly to further wedge the two pieces of steel but mostly to protect his fingers, raised the stout chunk of wood he’d earlier used as a crutch, and smote the large end of the V, driving the two ends of it apart.

  Nothing, except that the blow nearly broke his hand. Streaks of flame raced over his head along the rafters; sparks rained down onto the floor. Put a block of wood between the ends of the V …

  And hold it in place with your teeth?

  He settled the two files, braced himself, and struck again, like Ogon striking the iron in his forge, and this time the two steel files proved stronger than the rusted iron of the bracelet. The manacle snapped, and, gasping in the heat, January crawled across the floor to the open trap. And yes, there was a rope, nearly invisible in the darkness, wrapped around the top of what had been the ladder from below, that hadn’t been there the day before.

  A shower of sparks fell on him as the roof-blaze spread. Holding to the rope (and I’d better find something on it besides somebody’s snagged-up laundry!) he tried to inhale, coughed on smoke and burning air, and slid down into the water. The surface lay a foot beneath the rafters holding up the floor; in the red flare and blackness it was difficult to make anything out clearly. A desperate rat scrambled onto his shoulder; holding the rope, January submerged and felt it swim free. The underside of the floor – the ceiling-beams of the wood store below – swarmed with frantic cockroaches, and every bobbing log that filled the water around him seemed occupied with livestock: rats, raccoons, squirrels. Beady inhuman eyes reflected the crimson light.

  You had better, he addressed his musical colleagues, have run the guideline clear out through the wood store door, if this is going to work …

  They had. The line in his hand was joined to a small pirogue, not much more than a hollowed-out cypress log. He was afraid, as he pushed himself and the little vessel toward the barely-visible bar of reflected firelight, that he wouldn’t be able to get it under the lintel of the ground-floor entrance without swamping it. The space beneath the loft floor was nearly solid with floating wood as well, impeding his progress. Heat beat on his face, and he feared that the lintel and its framing would be in flames by the time he reached it.

  At least the fire should scare away any gators …

  He was well aware that alligators were particularly fond of underwater caves, such as the wood store had become. Also that alligators were pretty stupid and might well fail to notice the upper-works of their latest ‘cave’ burning over their heads …

  Virgin Mary, Mother of God, get me safe out of this …

  Saint Florian – conveniently the patron saint of both fires and floods and of the New Orleans First Municipality Volunteer Fire Company as well – get me safe out of this. I’d light a candle for you but you’ve already got the whole wood store going …

  He emerged, gasping, into the muggy air of night above the water just as the roof caved in. Lights swarmed like fireflies along the gallery of the weaving house and when he’d pushed himself a little further from the blazing walls, he could see candle-flame in the windows of the big house as well. The brightness of the fire behind him now, and of those lights and their reflections, made it hard to make out whether the rowboat which had launched the attack was still in the vicinity. At least, he reflected, the lights oriented him. When first he’d begun sawing at the chain on his wrist he’d feared that in the dark of the half-overcast night he’d become confused, and find himself out in the river and being swept along toward the Gulf.

  He kept one arm over the gunwale of the pirogue and let the vessel support him, rather than trying to clamber in. The water around him was filled with debris, not o
nly of the burning wood store but of the flood as well: fragments of fences, uprooted trees, now and then the bloated body of a horse or a cow. He prayed that Cochon and Uncle Bichet would whisper to Minou and Charmian, It’s all right. We snuck him a file and a pirogue …

  (And where the hell did you boys get that pirogue?)

  He wondered if his mother was watching, from the attic of the big house where she was comfortably confined.

  Or did she know, or guess?

  Did she even waken?

  The prospect of being incinerated in his prison had rendered him somewhat philosophical about the possibility of alligators (Just who is the patron saint to invoke against alligators?) in the dark water around him, but he was nevertheless extremely glad when he finally glided among the first of the cypress trees, and felt safe enough to haul himself up into the boat. By the sound of the scuttling in the stern, he wasn’t the only passenger, but was so exhausted at that point that he scarcely cared. His fellow musicians had remembered to leave an oar in the vessel (That must have been Uncle Bichet), and though his arms hurt as if he’d been beaten by an enraged Irishman with a stick, he paddled in among the trees, the dry fingers of Spanish moss scratching gently at his face, until he lost sight of all but the smallest twinkle of the fire.

  Then he pushed the pirogue up against the side of a tree, stretched out on the bottom, and in spite of wet clothes, burned hands, and pain all over, fell asleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Waking, he smelled smoke.

  For a moment he thought he was back in his own house, dreaming of the flood.

  Then he remembered yesterday evening, and the sight of a thread of smoke above the trees of the ciprière. Swamp trappers or slave stealers or, just possibly, he thought now, someone else …

  But between the big house, and half the Cold Bayou slaves camped in the sugar mill – not to speak of the blackened ruin of the wood store – it was actually pretty difficult to tell.