Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

Old Alexandre Froide’s broke-down house up the bayou, Visigoth had said.

  He half-closed his eyes, remembering where he’d been in relation to the Casita when he’d seen that line of smoke, and its approximate direction. Ravenously hungry and half-numb with exhaustion and thirst, it was hard to make himself do anything. But a glance around him showed him that the waters had retreated some six inches during the night. It was almost light enough that he knew that search parties would be out probing the woods, in quest of some sign of the missing women.

  At least whatever small stowaways had accompanied him out of the burning wood store last night had abandoned ship and scrambled up into the tree in the small hours. The only creature remaining on-board was an enormous king snake, basking in the tepid grayness of early dawn in the stern. ‘I’d take it kindly in you if you’d put in a good word for me with Damballah Wedo,’ he addressed it, and the serpent turned a wise gold eye toward him and flicked its tongue in enigmatic assent.

  Hell, that might be Damballah Wedo …

  He took Rose’s compass from its ribbon around his neck. Contact with its round silver shape was like touching her hand. While I’ve been running and hiding like a rabbit in a field, she’s been in hiding as well, not knowing what’s happened.

  In the inner pocket of his vest, his fingers sought the blue beads of his rosary – which the Black Duke hadn’t stolen – and he whispered a prayer for her, for their sons. Holy Mother of God, let me see them again …

  He paddled, cautiously, west.

  It didn’t take him long to sight the stronger light where the trees ended. He knew that without a compass, men could become lost in the swamps, starving or dying of thirst while they struggled with the changeless, featureless sameness of identical trees. With the flood upon the land the situation was worse, and he blessed Rose for leaving him with the compass and the Black Duke for not checking anything besides his pockets. Carefully, he paddled closer to the trees’ edge, noting again how the waters had sunk a little, with the ending of the storm in the Gulf. To the north of him he saw the tall roofline of the weaving house, and identified where he was.

  The temptation was strong to go to the dead-huts, to look for what he was fairly sure was there, but he didn’t dare. They were too close to the house, too close to the man who’d tried to kill him last night. Instead he turned swampward, as they would have said in New Orleans. Awkwardly – it was difficult to paddle with his legs stretched out in front of him, instead of sitting on his knees – he made his way north eastward, where he had seen the smoke. When the sun came up, the heavy gray air grew brighter, but it was still impossible to tell direction in this sullen green cathedral of cypress and half-drowned tupelo. He checked his compass constantly, and he sipped cautiously at his water-gourds, as rivers of sweat ran from his face.

  He passed shell-mounds, where the Chaouachas or the Colapissa had raised their villages on the high ground along vanished bayous and branches of the main river, lines of oaks and loblolly pine now standing barely clear of the surrounding waters. Cattle and pigs, released from their pens as the waters came on, looked up at January as he paddled by. On one chenier he thought he recognized his old friend Keppy the mule. On another, surely that was Jules Mabillet’s handsome black gelding.

  He smelled smoke again, this time with sufficient strength that he could turn his pirogue in that direction. His hands and his bruised back smarted from the paddle. Dizziness turned him sick.

  Turtles regarded him from half-submerged logs and alligators slid wetly from the banks, or regarded him with eyes like black-and-yellow beads. On a branch over his head two dozen white egrets watched the movement of the water below, like a choir of ghosts.

  Clearer light beyond the trees, and the glimpse of something gray that wasn’t a tree trunk. January backed his paddle, approached more cautiously. Yes, definitely what had been a house, on top of a chenier and surrounded by oaks. There wasn’t much left of it and the islet-space was severely reduced now, the remains of the brick piers standing in a half-foot of water and the higher ground behind it crowded with three mules and two cows. Most of the roof had fallen in – years ago, it looked like – and the plank walls had been half-stripped by whoever needed lumber in the years since Alexandre Froide had sold the land to the St-Chinians. It had no gallery, and the upper floor, jutting out on both sides over the lower, had begun to sink down as the rafters yielded themselves to destiny and decay. In ten years, thought January, it would be utterly gone.

  Smoke puffed fitfully from a chimney at one end. Also from the windows, which did not auger well for the state of the chimney nor the breathability of the air indoors.

  And indeed, as January watched from the concealment of the trees, a man emerged onto the broken steps. Young, tall, and wide-shouldered, his red shirt and tucked-in trousers, the gaudiness of his waistcoat and the bedraggled strings of what had once been stylishly-curled soap-locks all announcing that this was the Irishman who’d gotten off the Vermillion – sick, Hannibal had reported second-hand – at English Turn.

  The young man looked about him at the waste of water that still surrounded the chenier with an air of weary vexation, and turned to call some remark back to someone in the house behind him. Probably, reflected January, ‘Fooken water’s still up to our chins out there …’

  A shadow moved in the house, then emerged onto the step behind him.

  It was Chloë Viellard.

  ‘In me heart I always knew, I’d rather see her dead than wed to another man.’ Tommy Kildare rubbed tired hands over his rather long, square-chinned face. ‘T’was all I meant at the beginnin’, gettin’ off the boat as I done. I just couldn’t stand it.’

  He was a redhead – dark auburn, like polished mahogany – but his eyes were a Spaniard’s, chestnut-brown and fringed with long black lashes. Without five days’ growth of scrubby beard he’d have been boyishly pretty, save for the strong set of his mouth.

  ‘And ’tisn’t I didn’t know what that fookin’ louse father o’ her’n had made her do, from the time she was twelve years old. I never got the chance t’ kill him, but if ever one man died of another man’s prayers that he’d do so, that man was Fergus Trask. There’s more than one time that I’ve kissed the leather of her pretty shoes. But I was sixteen, an’ had Ma an’ me sisters to look after, an’ none to keep the roof over their head ’cept what I could bring ’em. Old Fergus said he’d kill me if I so much as touched her hand. But her marryin’ …’

  He shook his head, glanced across at Chloë – perched on the ruination of a bent-willow stool just within the house doorway – and then back at January, who sat on the step below him.

  ‘I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t.’

  He kept his voice soft, though the woman who lay on the bed behind him – in that portion of the downstairs parlor that wasn’t hazy with smoke from the malfunctioning chimney – lay unmoving, her closed eyes smudgy with fatigue and with her struggle for life. When January had checked her pulse, and drawn back the lid from her eye, Ellie Trask had recognized him and smiled a little, stretched out one hand to touch his arm.

  Then her glance had gone past him to Tommy, and the smile had deepened and warmed.

  ‘I thought seein’ you here was a dream,’ she’d whispered, her soft voice cracked, and she’d sipped a little of the water Chloë had been boiling.

  She slept again now, and January guessed that she was going to live.

  ‘I only meant to talk to her.’ Tommy’s glance again crossed Chloë’s, drawing January’s eyes after it, but behind the thick lenses, the young woman’s eyes were expressionless as aquamarines. ‘On the boat from town me an’ the boys heard talk from the engineers, about that old camp or village out in the woods, where the runaway slaves had hid, poor bastards. I told St-Ives to send me word, to let me know from seein’ her wid his own eyes, if she was happy wid this senile old Frenchman the Boss was after pushin’ her to wed. How …’

  He hesitated, and looked again at Chloë. />
  ‘How Madame here guessed I’d be there—’

  ‘It was elementary.’ Chloë shook her head, her spectacles flashing. ‘Fleurette – Locoul’s wretched sister, who is so grateful for anyone’s notice that she’ll reveal the secrets of her bosom in the next breath after “Hello” – mentioned that one of M’sieu Trask’s boys got off at English Turn, sick, which started me wondering. It seemed to me a very curious thing, you know, for a man to forsake his transportation an hour’s paddle from a destination where he could be sure of a bed, in favor of the amenities available at a settlement that boasts of little more than a wood lot and a livery-stable.’

  ‘It did to me, also,’ agreed January. ‘I take it that’s why you left dinner and returned, alone, to the Casita—’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t very well ask Hélène to assist me,’ Chloë reasoned. ‘With the storm blowing up, she’d never have let me go out alone. I’d sent St-Ives out Tuesday night to English Turn, with a note for M’sieu Kildare—’

  ‘St-Ives never did like the Boss treatin’ Ellie as he did,’ reflected Tommy. ‘An’ he never trusted him not to sell him off, for all he’s a free man an’ knew a fair few secrets about him.’

  ‘I told Madamoiselle Trask after dinner that Tommy would be at the dead-huts. They were the only place where an assignation could reasonably be arranged, since they’re really the only landmark in the woods that can easily be found. This place—’ she gestured to the ruinous structure above and around them, half-swamped in wild grapevine and smelling of smoke and rot – ‘is far too far back in the ciprière, and there isn’t a clear path to it. I only knew of it because I used to come to Cold Bayou as a girl, when Uncle César had the running of the place. After Valla’s death,’ she went on more quietly, returning Tommy’s sidelong glance, ‘I had the feeling that Madamoiselle Trask might … might feel differently about a suitor from among her uncle’s comitatus. But I wanted to meet with him, first.’

  She hesitated, as if considering a hand of cards. ‘I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing,’ she said at length. ‘I do try to, but I’m never certain what the right thing is.’

  ‘You thought in fact,’ said January, ‘that arranging a match with someone else might be the only means of saving Ellie’s life.’

  ‘And so ’twas.’ Kildare’s heavy brow knotted over those oddly womanly eyes. ‘Wid the rain comin’ an’ goin’, an’ wind weepin’ like the souls of the damned, we come to fear she’d lose her way in the woods. So we took me lantern an’ walked back toward the house, an’ that’s where we found her, lyin’ on the path about half a mile into the woods, cold as mackerel an’ throwin’ up blood.’

  ‘Had I known there was the slightest chance you’d be accused of the deed—’ Chloë laid a small hand on January’s arm – ‘I should probably have tried to get her back to the Casita. But the flood was already rising. We brought her to the dead-huts, where at least she’d be dry, and wrapped her in a coat Tommy had found there, thrust into the thatch of one of the ruined huts. Tommy had a horse – it’s that gray out behind the house, one of Thierry Chiasson’s that runs the livery at English Turn. By the time it was clear we were going to have a full-on flood, it was obvious to me that she’d been poisoned. On the whole I thought she’d have a better chance at survival if we didn’t go back to Cold Bayou, at least not until I had a better idea of who was behind it, and how many people were in on it.’

  ‘I think,’ said January thoughtfully, ‘that I know who that might have been. But it’ll be hard to prove – and I doubt there’s anything we can do about it.’

  Chloë’s eyes narrowed. ‘Hmn. In any case by that time,’ she added, ‘I knew that Valla’s death had nothing to do with her.’

  ‘It did—’

  They all turned, at the hoarsely-whispered words from within the dimness of the house. Kildare sprang to his feet at once and hastened inside. ‘Acushla, you shouldn’t …’

  January turned himself on the doorsill where he sat, in time to see Ellie Trask raise her face to the young Irishman, a look of wondering disbelief in her eyes, and then clasp him tight as Kildare’s strong arms went around her.

  ‘So it weren’t a dream,’ she whispered. ‘Tommy, mavourneen …’

  ‘I’m here,’ he murmured, after their lips parted from a kiss. ‘I’ll always be here, if you’ll have me—’

  ‘Always—’

  ‘Your uncle—’

  ‘The devil can swallow my uncle sideways.’ She pressed her face to his chest. ‘Tommy, I thought you’d turned from me …’

  ‘Never.’ Another kiss. ‘Never! But how was I to come to you, when this rich old Frenchman would give you everythin’ your heart was set on … includin’ gettin’ away from Uncle Mick …’

  ‘We can get away,’ she breathed. ‘You an’ me. Somehow.’ She moved shakily toward the light of the doorway, and January saw, draped around her shoulders, a man’s short-skirted tweed coat, of a yellowish mustard tweed.

  A coat crusted with dried blood.

  His eyes went to Chloë, and she nodded as she got to her feet. ‘You should lie down,’ she said gently, touching Ellie’s arm. In the morning light the taller girl looked ghastly, her wheat-gold hair hanging around her face in muddy strings and the turquoise-and-gold silk of her dress unspeakably soiled. ‘You’ve been ill …’

  Ellie looked out across the yellow-brown waters that stretched on all sides, and her eyes widened; she looked quickly around her, brushing the hair back from her face. ‘So that weren’t a dream neither,’ she murmured. ‘Where am I? I thought I was at them dead-huts—’

  ‘We brought you here, when the floods started comin’ deep,’ said Tommy. ‘Mo chroí, I feared I’d lost you – and I think I’d have died, to lose you a second time.’

  ‘Never. Not now.’ She shook her head, still clinging to his shoulder, and her eyes went to Chloë. ‘Not ever. You said … What happened to me? After you talked to me on the gallery I – I made up me mind to go … But then I felt sick, I think …’

  ‘You were poisoned,’ said January quietly. ‘Someone broke into the Casita earlier in the night and put poison in … in a drink they knew you’d take.’

  Ellie looked aside quickly, and blushed. To Tommy, she murmured, ‘Brandy. An’ I swear to you, darlin’, I’ve been polishin’ off half a bottle an’ more every night, since I told Mr St-Chinian I’d be his wife – pourin’ it down even as I was thinkin’, What the hell am I doin’? What am I doin’ to myself? An’ when Valla was killed—’

  ‘Valla’s death had nothing to do with anyone making an attempt on your life.’ January got to his feet, and coming close to the couple, moved his hand toward the crusted bloodstains on the jacket. ‘You found this in the dead-huts, Michie Kildare, I think you said? Pushed into the thatch?’

  ‘High up. Where the floods wouldn’t pull it loose, I think.’

  ‘It’s Guillaume Molina’s. The overseer,’ January added, when Ellie looked blank. ‘I think when we go back to the dead-huts and search the thatch of those huts to the very top – which my amanuensis didn’t think to do, when I was there Wednesday morning – we’ll find whatever proof Valla had come across, that Molina was cooking the plantation books.’

  Rather than surprise, Ellie’s pretty face registered only relieved agreement. ‘I knew he had to be,’ she said. ‘I saw all those barrels in the cooperage there, far more than what I knew a plantation this size should be puttin’ out each year. An’ that cameo Mrs Molina was wearin’ when she came down to the landin’ to greet poor Father Eugenius – wherever it is he ended up – an’ that silk dress of hers, that’s got to have cost twenty-five dollars if it cost a silver dime …’

  ‘You made a note of it,’ remarked January, and, surprised, Ellie nodded.

  ‘Just ’cause I have no writin’ doesn’t mean I can’t take note of what I see.’

  ‘An’ she’s got her numbers, right enough.’ Kildare gave the girl’s shoulders a proud squeeze. ‘Hell, she was
keepin’ the books for the High Water tavern since she wasn’t tall enough to look over the bar.’ And in a quieter voice he added, ‘I think I loved her then …’

  ‘Well, you was for always pullin’ my hair,’ retorted Ellie, with a rare, relaxed grin at him. ‘An’ him lookin’ like a garden-rake covered in spots, an’ just over from Ireland with no more English than M’am Janvier’s dog.’

  Her lips pursed tight suddenly, and she looked aside.

  ‘But you’re wrong, Mr J,’ she said softly. ‘Wrong when you say poor Valla’s death had nuttin’ to do with … with what happened to me. With what everybody was hopin’ an watchin’ would happen to me.’

  Her brown eyes flooded with tears. ‘When they found Valla – for whatever reason she was killed – all anybody could talk about was, that they had to protect me. It was all as if Valla had been like a dog tied up outside the house, an’ the dog got killed by someone who was comin’ after me. Can you understand that at all?’

  White and haggard, she turned her face from Chloë to January and then back. ‘They were all: “Oh, we’re so sorry your dog got killed but we need to protect you.” Even the ones who really did want to protect me,’ she added. ‘It’s like Valla was … was just somethin’ that got stepped on by accident.’

  ‘But in fact,’ pointed out Chloë – who had a great deal in common with Michie Singletary – ‘it’s what they all did think.’

  ‘That didn’t make her less dead!’

  ‘No,’ said January softly.

  ‘That’s when I knew. That’s when I thought …’ Ellie shook her head. ‘I knew I had to get out of there. Not just because someone there was after killin’ me, but because … because someone had killed her, an’ it looked to me like no one was noticin’. Not her, an’ really not me, except for poor Mr St-Chinian. An’ I thought: I can’t do this. I can’t live among these people. Not ’cause one of ’em – or pretty much all of ’em – wanted me dead … Not ’cause I was afraid. Not really. I was angry. An’ sick of it to me back teeth.’