Pauline flinched and caught her breath as if struck, then fought herself to stillness again. She rose like an automaton, not even daring to wipe the tears from her face and the snot trickling from her nose, and made her way to the door. Petticoats rustled as her mother stepped aside to let her pass, a thin harsh sound like flakes of steel. A good Creole daughter, Pauline curtsied to her mother, then vanished into the bake-oven shadows of the hall.
Louise Marie's eyes flickered, showing white all around the rim. Does she think after thirty minutes of that, her mother's going to put her through it, too?
"You may go to your room as well, Louise Marie."
"Yes, Mother." The words came out like paper scraping as it is crushed. She rose quickly and without the ostentatious demonstrations of pain and bravery-the bitten lower lip, the tiny gasps, the hand on the hip-so characteristic of her every move. She still limped, and badly, but not nearly to the usual extent; she had almost reached the door when her mother said in that same whipcut voice,
"Is this a sty or a garbage bin, Louise Marie, that you leave your dirty crockery all over the house?"
The young woman turned quickly back and collected her lemonade glass.
"I'm very sorry, Monsieur Janvier," said Madame Lalaurie, as Louise Marie's halting rustle of petticoats retreated down the hall. No anger inflected her voice, and no contrition. Only pleasant calm, as if reducing her children to tears of terror and exhaustion were a daily commonplace. It occurred to him suddenly to wonder what being "sent to one's room" entailed. "I assure you, both girls will be able to demonstrate the proper proficiency at Tuesday's lesson. Of course, Bastien will compensate you for the extra time today."
She melted into the gloom of the hallway with barely a whisper of silk. At no time during the previous forty minutes had January seen her face.
"M'sieu Janvier?"
He turned to find Bastien at his elbow, urbanely gesturing him out.
On the docks there were still two wagonloads of brandy to unload. Passengers loitered grumpily along the railing of the upper decks; on the lower, uneven gaggles of slaves and poor and keelboat Kaintucks jockeyed for places in the shade.
At the steamboat offices January sent in his card and asked for the lading lists for Wednesday, September 18: the Missourian and the Vermillion had docked in the morning, if the clerk recalled aright, the New Brunswick had been in by afternoon for certain, the Walter Scott and the Silver Moon sometime between four and eight o'clock, he thought. But, he said, he might be wrong.
During the lesson, January had left his grip in the charge of a woman at a silk shop a few houses down Rue Royale from the Lalauries, and now he changed clothes in a sheltered corner of the Philadelphia's deck. Once out of the formal disguise of black coat and linen shirt, he wandered over to the engine room, watching a mixed crew of black and Irish stevedores carrying barrels and packages aboard and stowing them on deck.
"You made it," remarked the engineer, coming out beside him in time.
"And I feel like a prize fool for hurrying." January grinned, and the stout, heavily muscled little man grinned back up at him.
"Oh, I seen 'em do this a thousand times." He spoke rough English, like an American; January guessed him a freedman from one of the American enterprises in the town. "Rushing around like somebody took and lit they tails on fire, and then we end up waitin' all the same." He wiped his hands on a rag.
"Think we'll make Twelve-Mile Point by dark?" "Oh, sure. Once the old Philly get goin', she goes, and Mr. Graham, he can work her up the banks close enough you can pick daisies off the levee. We'll make Red Church by dark, easy, never mind Twelve-Mile Point."
January personally didn't think so-Red Church landing was a good twenty-five miles upriver-but nodded and looked impressed. He lowered his voice, and leaned down a little to the engineer. "Look, sir, this's my first time out of New Orleans. I got all my papers just fine, and notarized at the Cabildo, but I been hearing rumors and talk. How safe is it, going up to Twelve-Mile Point? I'm going to see my sister, that still works for Mr. Bailey up there, and I'm... well, I'm a little worried. About river pirates and slave stealers and such."
All humor vanished from the engineer's eyes. "Where you staying, brother?"
January hefted his grip. "I thought I'd sleep out in the woods."
"You should be safe. But watch your back, you know? You don't have to sleep in the woods, neither.
The big house up at Spanish Bayou, 'bout two miles down from the Point, is empty now, they're sellin' it up. You can probably sleep on the gallery or in one of the cabins. There'll be water in the well and everything. Just be a little careful who you talk to, and don't get yourself anywhere where you can't run.
How you gettin' home?"
"I thought if nobody's around the plantation I'd put out a flag on the landing when the Lancaster comes by tomorrow."
"Just what I was going to tell you. Bailey's a good man-county magistrate in St. Charles Parish, as you probably know. Go to him if you can, if you get in any kind of trouble. His place is about three miles above the point. Skylark Hill, he calls it, but most people still call it the Old Marmillon Place."
"I know I sound like a timid old maid," said January deprecatingly. "I hear most people can travel pretty safe-I hear even Marie Laveau went upriver for a bit, last month."
The engineer chuckled. "That she did. Took a cabin on the Lancaster, bold as paint, is what Guidry on the Lancaster told me, and put a gris-gris on his engine room into the bargain, for them lettin' her off at the old Black Oak landing like she asked, and tellin' off the Jefferson to pick her up there again on their way down. I'd sure like to see some slave stealer try to mess with that lady." He threw back his head and laughed richly, relishing the picture of the slave stealers' discomfiture. "Now that I truly would."
It was five thirty, and close to sunset, when the Philadelphia finally backed out of the wharf. From among a group of black freedmen and free colored laborers on the bottom deck, January nervously watched the banks slide by, wondering how from the height of the texas deck Mr. Graham could possibly navigate among the slanting shadows, the hot, hard glare of brazen sun on the water and then the fast-falling twilight that changed every snag, every bar, every line of ripples from moment to moment as he watched.
The engineer hadn't lied about the pilot's skill. Once clear of what had been the Hurst plantation, now divided up into house lots, the river's banks deteriorated. Hugging them close, out of the heavy strength of the main channel that swept the downstream-bound boats so quickly by, was a matter of avoiding fallen trees; submerged mud spits; hidden obstacles; and, January reflected uneasily, 'the corpses of other boats that had come to grief on similar debris.
How the pilots did it January didn't know, but in a very short time he saw the lights of the Carrollton wharf twinkling primrose through just-gathering dusk. They stopped there and went through what seemed to him to be an endless, fiddling rigmarole of off-loading cargo, taking on passengers, holding the boat while the passengers went hunting for the youngest member of their family who had wandered away; no, wait, Mr. Slow-Toad and his worthless wife and family want to get off here after all. Luggage? Good heavens, sir, we did have luggage! Let's send the slowest waiter onboard to look for it while we all stand here and talk.
Between Carrollton and Twelve-Mile Point lay about three miles of fickle shadows and dark water inhabited by every snag, bar, and submerged tree in Louisiana-sea serpents, too, belike, thought January gloomily, watching the matte, dark cutouts of the trees glide by.
Alligators, anyway.
Sixteen years ago, when he'd left Louisiana for France, nothing but cane and cipriere lay between Girod Street and Baton Rouge. Even then, the plantation of Bellefleur where he had been born had been sold and subdivided. He knew the names of the streets between which it had lain, but was not able to pick out where they were, behind the levee. In time Bellefleur and all who had dwelt there would be forgotten.
In his mind it
still stood, and presumably in Olympe's, and his mother's: the whitewashed brick house, and the quarters; the cypress swamp through which his father was pursued, endlessly, by red-eyed hounds in dreams.
His elbows on the railing, January closed his eyes. The heavy churning of the water only a few feet below him, the throb of the engine, shuddered in his bones, but not enough to shake out those memories of innocence and love and pain.
You were born in the country, in thick hot rain and the smell of burnt sugar, the silence and the cicadas and the fiogs. You waited on the gallery in the dark for your father to come, and he never did. Where do you go now?
Ayasha. Rose. She'd flinched from his touch... Don't...
Did he think if he found Cora for her-rescued her friend from the men who'd taken her, cleared her name so that xhe could come back without being hanged for the muruer of the man who'd raped her every day for the past who knew how many years-always supposing that she was innocent-that Rose would fall into his arms?
But he didn't want her to fall into his arms.
We all need friends, he thought. Although it was not wholly friendship in his mind when he saw again the cocoa brown tendrils of Rose's hair lying soft over her cheeks, the thin angular shape of her shoulders in her blueand-yellow dress.
Ayasha rose to his mind, the way her hot black eyes flamed when he admired another woman, the desert-witch smile. Oh, a friend is what you want, is it, malik?
Yes, he whispered. Yes. I am lonely, and I want a friend. Under his feet he felt the engines change their note. From somewhere above a man yelled, "Back her! Back her! Bring her around!"
The twilight was still luminously clear, delicate as the heart of a blue topaz, like water through which all things seemed perfect, without shadow or light. He saw the clus ter of cypress on the batture, the floating wooden platform of the landing at Twelve-Mile Point.
When he climbed the levee, his grip in his hand, the world was an identical patchwork, long thin strips of newgrowing cane, rustling corn black in the twilight, trees like clouds sleeping on the ground where they guarded the houses of the whites.
The lacy ghost of the Philadelphia floated away into the gloom around Twelve-Mile Point, but he could see its lights twinkle for some time. Lights burned, too, in the houses among the trees, until from the top of the levee he saw a big white house in the circle of its gallery and its trees that showed no lights, and whose fields, when he walked down through them, were already rank with the quick-growing weeds of these tropical lands.
There was no smell of human habitation; not around the privies of the big house or around the cabins of the slaves. No cattle in the barns or horses in the stables. Janu ary wondered if the Reverend Dunk had convinced Madame Redfern to sell these, too, to him for half what they were worth. The woman seemed clever, sharp, and hard as a horseshoe nail. But January had seen her simper like a girl as the man of God kissed her hands.
People would be here Monday, to look over the house bcfore buying it. Maybe sooner.
Among the slave cabins he took candle and lucifers from his grip and made enough of a light to look into one or two, to make sure they weren't inhabited by anything or anyone else. The sight of them jabbed something inside him, as if he'd closed his hand on cloth with a needle still in it: the single big pine-pole bed each family shared-two beds if it was a large cabin and two families shared it. Pegs where clothing had hung, where pots had been removed. In one cabin someone had left a banjo, a five-stringed instrument of a skin stretched over a gourd.
January went back up to the big house, and drew himself water from the well. Returning to the cabin where the banjo was, he shook up the straw tick and tightened the bed-ropes, then for the first time since childhood lay down under a slave-cabin roof. He thought the place would trouble-him, or the fear of discovery, of being kidnapped as Cora had been kidnapped. At least the ghosts who'd died there, of pneumonia or overwork, would whisper in the corners.
But he prayed for them, those nameless ones, with his battered blue rosary, asking God's rest for their souls: The deep silence of the country, the whirring of the cicadas and the peeping of the frogs in the swamp, was a sound of comfort to him, a song from his childhood. He realized that this was the first night since July that he had not worked among the sick, the dying, and the dead.
He slept, and no one visited him in his dreams.
Thirteen
The Redfern house at Spanish Bayou was fairly new, built in the American style probably not more than a decade before. Square, brick, it had a pillared porch and galleries front and back instead of all around, as was the French or Spanish way. It was painted blue instead of whitewashed or stuccoed, the shutters of the windows painted yellow, an astonishing piece of ostentation, considering the price of coloring agents in paint. Instead of all the rooms opening onto the gallery they opened inward, into a central hall.
They'll never believe I'm not here to rob the place, January thought, as he flipped loose the catch of a ground-floor window.
His mother would disown him.
Inside there was the same elaboration, the same display, that he recognized from the Lalaurie house, though without Madame Lalaurie's exquisite taste. Where Madame Lalaurie's parlor might boast a marble-topped bureau touched up with gilt handles and hinges, here were tables of black marble crusted with ormolu, jewelers' work rather than cabinetmakers', and a bad jeweler at that. Thick-stuffed brocade furniture in the German style instead of the spare, cool French; four sets of china laden with curlicues and scrollwork instead of the single, elegant Limoges.
It was the house of a woman frantic to have the best. And it would all be sold.
No wonder Emily Redfern was angry enough to do murder.
Twilight, Shaw had said. Presumably just before the windows-American casements, far less easy to trip from the outside-were closed up for the night. If Cora had come here Tuesday it would have been simpler: into the study, take the pearls and the money, then out the same way. And there was the chance that if another servant saw her, they wouldn't realize yet that she'd run away.
If it had been Wednesday-how soon before the arrival of the boat at the Spanish Bayou wharf? How fast could a slim young girl run, when she heard the hoot of the boat whistle?-it would be more difficult by far, if she'd slipped from the study, down the central hall to the warming-pantry where she'd have had access to supper. If it had been earlier yet, before supper was finished cooking, it became more complicated.
She'd have had to cross the open yard to the kitchen, where the cook would certainly have seen her.
Would she have risked that, twenty-four hours after she'd gone missing, with no possibility of a shrug and a lie? Oh, I was just off in the woods for a little, I wasn't going to run away. Sir.
It grated on January's nerves to go upstairs. Should anyone come in, he'd be cut off from escape, but he knew he had no choice. The Redferns had slept in separate rooms: his plainly furnished, the pieces new but not extravagant, hers a fantasia of ruffles, lace, silk, carving, and gilt. It was hers that he searched.
She'd put the red-and-gold candy tin up inside the fireplace, in a sort of ledge on the inside of the mantel.
It was the fourth place January checked.
Foolish, he thought, opening the tin. At least she'd had the sense to dump out the rest of the monkshood, leaving only fragments and powder in the seams of the tin itself. But then, the slaves' children probably checked the rubbish heap regularly for broken china and bits of scraps, if she was supposed to be so sick from the poisoning that she couldn't leave her bed she'd hardly have been able to throw it down the outhouse.
He wrapped the tin carefully in two handkerchiefs, so am not to confuse whatever marks might still be on it, and stowed it in his grip.
In the warming-pantry at the back of the house he searched drawers until he found what he guessed would be there: Emily Redfern's menu for the week of the fifteenth. Of course Bernard Marigny's stuck-up yellow fussbudget cook would do things the Fr
ench way. He'd consult his mistress over a written menu, which would be amended in her hand.
And there it was. On the eighteenth of September the fare had consisted of turtle soup, sauteed shrimp and mushrooms, grilled tournedos of beef, roasted guinea hen, rice and gravy, fresh green beans, with jam crepes and berry cobbler for dessert. Breakfast, he was interested to note, had originally been omelettes and creamed gizzards with waffles and jam, but had been augmented-apparently at the last minute-with apple tarts, ham, and crepes.
Company for breakfast? Michie Otis returning in a foul mood after being threatened by Roarke and his bravos in full view of Monsieur Davis's gambling hall?
It was still early morning, barely eight by the sun. The Lancaster would not be coming down the reach above Twelve-Mile Point until three at the earliest. Cora Chouteau had spoken of Black Oak, as lying next to Spanish Bayou. Coming along the top of the levee last night he had seen that on the upriver side of the Redfern property there was only cultivated land. Downstream, however, lay a long tangle of woodlot and swamp, through which the bayou meandered in a couple of lazy curves.
January drew another pail of well water and ate some of the bread and cheese he'd packed and added to this apples from the small orchard behind the house, or what passed in Louisiana for apples anyway. It was a walk of about two miles, on the narrow paths between the canes, to the silent woods of black oak and ash, the suffocating green gloom of the slip of property that had been Madame Redfern's own.
The house here was much older than her husband's, and smaller, an old Creole dwelling from a time when Black Oak had been a proper, if minor, plantation. Like Mademoiselle Vitrac's school, the building was three rooms raised above three low storage chambers, with a couple of cabinets tacked onto the back for good measure. The kitchen and the quarters beyond had long ago crumbled to nothing, swallowed up in thickets of hackberry and elder when the fields had been bought up by the bigger planters on either side. Stripped of its whitewash by the weather, the house itself bore signs within of leakage, storm damage, and vermin.
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