02 Fever Season bj-2

by Barbara Hambly

  Once he thought he'd seen Mamzelle Marie pass the door of the cell, on her way to comfort some other prisoner or perhaps for some other reason.

  In a calmer voice, he went on, "For about two months it's been clear to me-and my friends will bear me out-that someone has been spreading rumors about me, trying to ruin me, for reasons of which I am ignorant. I don't know whether this is connected to those efforts or not." Canonge tossed the warrant down among the neat stacks of papers that almost solidly covered his desk: dockets, journals, correspondence in English, Spanish, and French. In addition to being a Judge of the Criminal Court, Canonge and his law partner still handled the affairs and estates of half a dozen of the most prominent Creole families in town, disposed of estates and executed escrows and wills. The whole of his book-lined office on the Cabildo's upper floor smelled of beeswax and stale coffee-like most Creoles, Canonge seemed to prefer candles to lamps-and those from the clerk's empty desk had been transferred to his own when the man had gone home at six.

  "It says the warrant was sworn out on the advice of a Dr. Emil Barnard." Canonge tapped with a skeletal forefinger at the notes written on the back of the warrant. "Barnard was the fellow took over from you at the ballroom that night, wasn't he? Took over the case. A regular doctor, not a surgeon. He seems to think-or he's gotten Brinvilliers to think-that your delaying of his treatment was what cost Brinvilliers's brother his life."

  "Emil Barnard..." January began, then closed his mouth again. White men as a rule did not like to hear other white men insulted by colored.

  "I hear tell," said Shaw mildly, "sir, that this Emil Barnard is a charlatan. He don't have a regular license, mostly got his doctorin' out of books. Ker over to Charity'll tell you. Somehow Barnard got took as a junior partner by Dr. Lalaurie. He works with Dr. Soublet at that clinic he's got on Bourbon Street."

  "Hmph." Canonge scribbled a note to himself, then raised a dark impatient eye. "And Lalaurie will tell you Ker is a charlatan, and Sanchez over on Poydras Street will tell you Lalaurie doesn't know a clavicle from a clavichord, and Lemonier on Royal Street got into a duel a month ago with Sanchez over the use of lunar caustic and velno's Vegetable Syrup. Have you ever read the letters Soublet exchanged with Dr.

  Connaud, on St. Louis Street, about `stretching bones and re-accommodating the ligaments of the body?

  It's enough to make you lock your doors and die. Take those things off that man."

  Without comment, Shaw produced a key and removed the manacles from January's wrists. The iron had galled the flesh even in the short walk from his cell down to the courtyard and up the stairs; January made a mental resolve to douse the raw flesh with alcohol the minute he could. After being in the cell since nine that morning he was convinced his clothing harbored quarts of roaches and maggots, and he knew excruciatingly well that it harbored fleas.

  "I'll deal with Jonchere when I see him. I'm surprised at him for even signing this. You, boy." Canonge jabbed a quill at January. "You be more careful whose bad side you get on, you hear? We can't afford to waste our time on foolery like this. Not at Carnival, with half the population trying to kill the other half in gambling brawls. Stick to what you know best."

  Eyes on his boot toes again, January replied, "I will, sir. Thank you, sir."

  "Give him his papers back and get him out of here." Canonge had already pulled another page of notes from the several neat piles on his desk. "Town's swarming with murderers and they pull in some damfool Good Samaritan..."

  In the main booking room downstairs, the Guards had just brought in Kentucky Williarns, drunk, screaming, and fighting like a netted tigress against the four men it took to contain her. In this the whore was ably assisted by her sisters-in-crime, a trio of harridans known as Railspike, Maggie Fury, and Kate the Gouger. Shaw muttered, "Lordy," as Railspike produced a slungshot from her ample and unfettered bosom and began cracking heads. "You bide a spell, Maestro, if you would. If they kill me don't tell nobody how it happened. It ain't somethin' I want on my tombstone."

  Shaw waded into the maelstrom of bare legs, thrashing breasts, yellowed petticoats and blue uniforms, dodging a swat with the slung-shot that cracked audibly on the point of his shoulder, and assisted Boechter-who was about half Williams's weight-and the others in dragging the Girod Street Harpies away from their manacled partner and thrusting them, screeching and cursing, out the door. January remained against the wall until the fighting was over, then came forward without a word and helped bandage up LaBranche, who'd taken a bad cut on the forearm from somebody's knife. "Don't let anyone arrest me if he dies," he remarked sourly, when Shaw came over to hand the hurt man a tin cup of whisky.

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Lieutenant, I'll sooner fight one of their men anytime!" The man gulped it down. "She's a she-steamboat and no mistake." Shaw helped him to his feet and supported him into the little infirmary cupboard where, four months previously, January had examined the Grille brothers after the fight on Bayou St. John.

  "Now, that warrant was the silliest damn thing I ever heard of," said the Kentuckian when he returned, still rubbing his shoulder. "I thought Canonge ought to hear about it. He's a sensible fella."

  "Thank you." January sighed, knowing that, even with the long day in the cells taken into account, things could have been far worse. "Thank you very much. I take it none of my family came to make my bail?"

  As he'd been led out of the yard past his mother's house she hadn't even so much as opened the shutters.

  Nothing to do with her. January didn't know whether to be bitter or amused.

  "Your sister came by." Shaw pulled a kerchief from his pocket and wiped the last stray drops and smears of blood from the bench where January had made the injured LaBranche sit. "Mrs. Corbier, that is. Said Mamzelle Marie mentioned to her as how you was here. She asked if there was anything she could do, but seein' as the charge was murder, silly or not, there wasn't no bail." He fished January's papers from his desk and handed them over, official recognition that he was a free man.

  January checked them and slid them into his jacket pocket. They were actually a copy of the original papers, the signatures carefully forged. He had six or seven such copies cached in his room and at the houses of both his sisters, just in case of mishap. It cost him an effort to say, "Thank you." Not to think about the fact that he had not needed such things in France. "And please thank Judge Canonge again for coming in and saving me two nights in the cells. I am very grateful for his trouble."

  When Shaw returned to his desk January followed, hands behind his back. "What became of Mrs.

  Redfern's pearls?"

  The Kentuckian didn't look up from trimming the candles. "Mrs. Redfern's pearls that allegedly ain't really her pearls?"

  "Those very pearls," January said. "Because if you've still got them, I'd like to take them out to Milneburgh tomorrow, as bait to get me in to speak to Reverend Dunk." And he told Shaw about Laurence Jumon's carriage team of white horses.

  "Now that is most interestin'." The gray cold eyes narrowed as Shaw settled into his battered chair.

  "Because I been a little curious about this particular Prophet of the Lord. Seems instead of buildin' this Church out to Milneburgh with the money he made out of resellin' Mrs. R's slaves, Reverend Hellfire turned around and bought slaves, to the tune of about eighty-five hundred dollars... which if you calculate the amount of Church money he used to buy them slaves from her, exactly half the profit he made, plus five thousand dollars, it all works out to just about that very figure."

  There was a time when January would have been surprised that a Kaintuck could accomplish such mathematics. Now he only said, "Dunk's fronting for her."

  "Either that, or he's doin' a damn good job of makin' it look that way." Shaw opened one of the desk's lower drawers, withdrew a tied packet of papers, then, rising, put a hand on January's shoulder as if to murmur a confidence, and drew him to the Cabildo's outer doors. With their backs to the lamplit room he tilted the papers. Pearls slid
into January's hand.

  In front of them, the Place d'Armes was a swaying sea of colors and flambeaux. Masked men and costumed women rioted among the cafes set up along the edges of the square. The music of a half-dozen bands cacophonized in the lamp-sprinkled lapis dark. Every steamboat on the levee was an illuminated palace, and somewhere a couple of clarionets and a bugle hooted out what was apparently supposed to be "Greenland's Icy Mountains."

  "Well, them slaves he bought with the money are bringin' in a passel, rented out to Tom Jenkins's new sawmill," Shaw went on mildly. "And by all I can see Dunk ain't gettin' rich. And then there's Mrs. R out to Nyades Street in a nice new house with spang new mournin' dresses and no visible means of support.

  You be careful when you go out to Milneburgh, now, Maestro."

  "His eyelids flutter. His breath gags in his throat. Sweat, the sweat of death, stands out on his face and brow. Oh, have you ever smelt the sweat of death, the stink of fear as a man approaches the horrible gate from which only one has ever returned? He gasps, fighting for air, for just one more mouthful of the blessed air of mortal life!"

  On the bench at the front of the hall-the ballroom of the Washington Hotel, rented for the purpose by ladies of the Church Committee-a woman cried out, and buried her face in her hands. Two girls clung to one another, desperately fighting sobs; another turned her face aside, her breath in staggering hiccups of terror, tears and mucus running down her face. Throughout the room, closepacked, rustling, thick with the scents of verbena and lamp oil and pomade, the undercurrent of sobs and groans floated, a soft soprano humming like mosquitoes above swamp waters.

  Reverend Dunk flung up his hands. "I see them!" he cried, and his brown eyes stretched, gazing into distance, the riveted horror in them the rival of a Kean or a Kemble. His finger stabbed out, trembling, his voice fell to a hoarse whisper that could be heard into the back of the room. "I see them even now. They writhe in the flames, flesh shriveling from their bones. They beg, they plead, they stretch out their hands for the touch, just the tiniest touch, of water." His fingers curled into a despairing fist. "But there is no water there. Only fire, and more fire..."

  A woman in the middle of the room screamed, jerked to her feet as if electrified; stood panting, gasping, head lolling back. One of the several soberly clothed young men who had been moving up and down the two aisles between the chairs went to her, spoke soothing words, led her down the aisle to the front bench.

  The better to hear Dunk 's excrutiatingly detailed catalog of the pains of hell? wondered January, from the back of the room.

  His mind went back to the Cathedral that morning, the deep still peace-even on the threshold of Mardi Gras. Sunlight touching the priest's violet vestments, the sweet mustiness of incense, the gentle murmur of voices. Esto mihi in Deum protectorem, et in locum refugii... Be thou unto me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge to save me...

  "I see worms, and rats, and ants, and all the vermin of the Devil's creation, gnawing on the flesh of those who lie in chains. Oh my brothers and sisters, do you imagine that your flesh will cease to feel when the last breath chokes from your heaving lungs? In the fires of hell, there your flesh will be as sensible, as tender, as shrinking as ever it was upon the earth..."

  One of the young ushers came soft-footed up to January and gestured invitingly toward the last four ranks of the room, where slaves and free colored occupied benches rather than the chairs set for their so-called betters. In the Cathedral, and St. Anthony's on Rue des Ramparts, no such distinction was made.

  January shook his head, smiled polite thanks ("I've already had some salvation today, thank you"), and handed the usher another card from Hannibal's collection. "If Reverend Dunk might spare me a few minutes of his time..."

  "I'll tell him," murmured the young man. "You realize, though, sir, that the exertions of the Spirit take a terrible toll upon our brother, and he will need rest."

  "I'll wait."

  Milneburgh was quiet in the winter season. From the gallery at the hotel's rear, January looked out over the lake, beaten lead under colorless sky, silent save for an occa sional stirring of wind. A servant swept the gallery. The air smelled of coffee and scorched toast.

  Periodically January returned to the ballroom, though for the most part he could follow the progress of the meeting by the muffled howls and singing audible even through the hotel's walls. Dunk himself went on in Boschian detail with his vision of hell for nearly an hour-The man must have lungs of leather and a bladder to match-after which, hair and shirt soaked with sweat, the preacher collapsed onto a chair on the podium. His soft-voiced assistants immediately took up the exhortation, one of them urging the congregation to "Come to Jesus; come to dear, sweet, tender Jesus; Jesus will save you; Jesus will rescue you..." while the other moved about the room, leading half-hysterical women and girls up to the benches in the front. The third time he entered, January saw that several of these front-benchers had fallen, twitching and writhing, to the floor. Dunk had one of them in his arms, whispering passionate comfort, his face so close to hers that the sweat that dripped from his hair fell to her lips; she clung to him, sobbing out a confession that was probably just as well drowned by the howling and the hymns.

  Even after the sounds died away, and the scattering of slaves, freedwomen, and free colored came out onto the veranda to revive themselves on coffee and biscuits, it was another three-quarters of an hour until Dunk could extricate himself from his white admirers and gesture January into a small parlor where they would not be disturbed.

  "Where had you these?" Offstage, as it were, Dunk's voice was quiet, but still beautiful, its natural depth and cadence making his words a pleasure. He didn't appear either startled or put out when January produced the pearls, only frowned with concern.

  "A colored girl gave them to me, sir," answered January. "I promised her I wouldn't say anything of her, and she's left town by this time..." He glanced at the angle of sunlight on the curtains, as if confirming a time, and made a very slight nod to himself. "But she said they belong to Mrs. Redfern, whom I gather is a friend of yours. Do you recognize them?"

  Dunk nodded, running the pearls through his fingers: sausagelike, but clean and with a surprisingly delicate touch. "I believe I do, though I saw her wear them only the once, two or three years ago. Would this be the unfortunate girl who made off with them last summer?" The warm sienna eyes grew wary under the long lashes.

  Any Frenchman-or any actor-would have changed his shirt and combed his hair after a three-hour performance of that intensity. Dunk apparently regarded the saturated linen and matted mane as badges of an honorable tussle with Satan. By the admiring gazes of the women who peeped through the panes at them, it was an opinion he did not hold alone.

  "I don't know, sir," replied January. "I understand you've visited the Redfern plantation and might be going there soon? I thought you might..."

  "Spanish Bayou has been sold." Dunk shook his head. "The girl who stole these pearls made off with the money that might have gone to the saving of it, poor wretch."

  "I understand the bulk of the damage was done long before that, sir," said January quietly. "Though I've never had the fever of gambling myself, and so I can't pass judgment on those who do..." "Can't you?" Under the Assyrian luxury of his beard, Dunk's mouth hardened. "You have the generosity of one who hasn't seen a good woman's life ruined through the vice, my friend." January assumed an expression of slightly startled enlightenment, as if the matter had never been presented to him or anyone else with such cogence before, and the Reverend's jaw came forward, a militant glint sparkling in his eyes.

  "You can't pass judgment, you say. That does you credit as a Christian. But I happen to know that only five days before his death, Otis Redfern was obliged to sell six of his slaves-with no way of redeeming the labor force of the plantation before harvest time, you understand-in order to pay debts incurred by that pernicious vice. Upon taking those slaves to the city, he entered into gambling again, like
a dog returning to his vomit, and lost the entire sum he had made by that sale, so that he had to return to his unfortunate wife the following morning and tell her that the money must immediately be paid over to his new creditors, and that they were ruined."

  His brows plunged to shadow those deep-set eyes, and his voice subtly shifted, the voice of a preacher determined to convince his audience.

  "Surely not!" January injected just enough doubt into his voice to bring Dunk up like a ruffling owl. "I was there myself and heard them, my friend. And if Mrs. Redfern recriminated against him, who could blame her? Redfern was preparing to sell even her dowery land, a parcel too small to be of use to anyone, whose deeds the wretched woman asked me to remove from the house lest they become entangled in the ensuing settlement. Now, what kind of a man would rob his wife to that extent?" "You shock me, sir!" January looked shocked. "Gambling is a fearful curse, sir. It deteriorates the character. Until the man spoke to his wife in such a way that I promise you, neither Mr. Granville, who was breakfasting with me, nor I knew where to look." Hubert Granville? thought January, enlightened. Granville was at Spanish Bayou that Wednesday morning? To render over the money from the previous day's sale of the six slaves, almost certainly. Arriving for breakfast, before Otis Redfern's return from town. And that being the case-"And you took the deeds for this dower land away with you that day?"

  "I considered it my obligation," replied Dunk. "The land was not the husband's to sell, but under the law he would have been able to do so."

  Not if it was tied up in a trust, it wasn't, thought January wryly. But Emily seemed to have convinced her hellfire cicisbeo otherwise. And almost certainly, the deed to Black Oak had not been the only thing in that envelope. "I was terribly shocked," Dunk went on slowly, "to hear of the unhappy man's death, but I cannot admit to much sorrow at it." He shook his massive head. "Still, to part from a man at the wharf after breakfast and to hear he has succumbed by midnight... It gives one thought for one's own mortality."