‘I’m so sorry, Mede.’ She took the valet’s hand. ‘He said, “If freedom’s what he wants, let him have it, then, and see what it is to be a free man.” He turned his face to the wall at the sound of your name.’
It was a kindly gesture, and January was interested to see that Mede endured her touch in stony silence.
She looked back at January, exhaustion darkening her eyes. ‘And he said he’d have nothing of a – a physician of your race,’ she finished. ‘I suspected as much, when I sent for Mr Spunge, and for Dr Gurry, though it was exceedingly good of you to come back. And to tell you the truth—’ She lowered her voice with a glance toward the empty hall behind her, as if Mr Spunge’s ghost lingered, listening. ‘I trust your remedies – and your discretion – a great deal more than I trust theirs. Which is why I want to ask you – and you, too, Mede – if he said anything to you, or spoke of anything …’
She hesitated. ‘I know you and I haven’t always gotten on, Mede,’ she went on quietly. ‘And I know your loyalty to Mr Bray. But if there is anything …’
‘I don’t know what you mean, m’am.’
Rowena Bray hesitated, as if forcing herself to leap into cold water. ‘I mean, for some time I’ve suspected that Mr Bray was being blackmailed.’
January’s eyes went immediately to Mede’s still face. The valet didn’t gasp, Blackmail! Or, That’s ridiculous! Didn’t demand, Who would do a thing like that?
Just waited, silent. January was reminded of how a cat, turned out of a box in an unfamiliar room, will crouch motionless, rapidly figuring out which way it can bolt.
‘I do the accounts in this household, Mr January,’ she went on. ‘Sheer terror at the magnitude of my husband’s gambling has made me something of a spymaster, estimating how much he tosses away each night. And the amounts don’t add up. He seems to be losing an additional two to three hundred dollars every month that I can’t account for.’
‘Have you spoken to him about this?’
Dark curls swung against her pale cheeks as she shook her head. ‘He claims it’s all gambling money, and not as much as I seem to think. But the way he drinks—’
Mede’s lips parted as if he would say something, but good slaves did not contradict whites – particularly white ladies – and no sound came out.
‘—I’m not sure he would remember how much he’s lost. He has no recollection of cutting his wrists, you know. None. But he generally does gamble with the same people, at least so far as I know …’
‘It’s one explanation,’ said January carefully. Like Mede, he’d had it beaten into him at a young age what a black man could and couldn’t say to a white woman, no matter how English she was or with what fairness she had regarded him. ‘Another one might be an irregular establishment.’
She averted her face for a moment, either in shock or in shame. ‘You mean, is he keeping a mistress?’ Her voice trembled. ‘I think I’d have heard of it. Washington teems with women who love nothing better than to pass along gossip, only to bask in the reaction they provoke. And as an Englishwoman …’
Quickly and surreptitiously, she wiped her eyes. ‘It’s one reason I’m trying to … to get to the bottom of what is going on. Of what drove him first to that degree of intoxication, to the point that he didn’t know what he was doing, and from there to despair. Because I’m afraid of what I might find out. What others might find out. May I count on your help?’
‘At any hour of the day or night.’ January bowed.
‘Mede—’
‘Of course, M’am. You know I would do anything for him – except remain a slave.’
‘Nor would he want you to,’ she responded, and smiled warmly. ‘Not in his better moments. I will send word to Mrs Trigg’s, if his condition changes.’
They walked in silence across the Paper Mill Bridge. Beneath the canopy of hickory and oak the air had a moist mildness that reminded January poignantly of New Orleans. January had had another letter from Rose and one from Olympe, and his heart ached at the memory of the indigo shade of the marketplace arches, the smell of the river and the long, melismatic wailing of the charcoal sellers in the streets. ‘Why didn’t you and Mrs Bray get along?’ he asked at length.
‘She’s mean to him.’ Mede’s boots scuffed last year’s brown leaves with a muffled swishing, like the scattering away of memories that might or might not be true. ‘She’s sweet as wild strawberries, when anybody can see her,’ he went on, after a long time. ‘All that time he was courting her, she was like a kitten, pretty and playful, hanging on his arm. When nobody’s around she’s got a mouth on her like a cat o’ nine tails.’
January tried to imagine what his calmly matter-of-fact Rose, or his cheerily sensual Ayasha, would have said to him if he’d lost a thousand dollars over a hand of cards.
‘Thing is, Mr J, Marse Luke’s never been happy here in Washington. He hadn’t been here a year, workin’ for Mr Pointsett, when he knew he’d had enough of livin’ in this town. He was never made for copyin’ some other man’s words in his best handwriting, and riding to an office every day, when the wind’s soft off the river and there’s fat rabbits stirring around the woods. He said living here made him feel like he was all alone on a desert island. It’s why he called me his Man Friday.’
He glanced across at January a little shyly, hoping he understood.
‘Friday was Crusoe’s friend,’ said January, ‘as well as his servant. The only man he could trust to guard his back.’
‘So he was, sir. Marse Luke couldn’t wait to get back to Fayette County. But by then he’d met Mrs Bray.’
A born political hostess, Mr Oldmixton had said. A woman who didn’t want to go back to her father’s house.
If that was almost three years ago – January counted back in his mind – Jackson would have been President. And Jackson, still aching from his own bereavement, was always susceptible to playful, kitten-pretty young ladies begging for a favor …
And always ready to give a valuable job to a bluegrass boy.
He could just imagine what a ‘born political hostess’, bred in London and used to the amenities of daily newspapers and decent opera in season, would have to say to the suggestion that she retire to a modest tobacco-plantation a day’s ride from the nearest village.
The stream purled in its rust-brown bed as they climbed up the road where January had almost been kidnapped, at his first meeting with this young man almost three weeks ago.
‘Is he being blackmailed?’
Mede didn’t answer for a time. An answer in itself, January reflected. Though the morning was warming, the young man walked with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets, like an Israelite longing for the fleshpots of Egypt where at least he’d had the illusion of safety.
‘When a man’s being blackmailed,’ asked Mede at last, ‘does he get letters written in numbers instead of letters?’
‘Numbers instead of letters?’
‘I saw one on his desk, clear last spring, when I came into his room unexpected. He locked it up quick and I never saw it again. But it was just lines of numbers, right across the paper like you’d write a letter or like the printing in a book.’
‘Did you notice the paper?’
‘It was that yellow tablet-paper, which everybody uses in the government offices. I never spoke of it. Dacey talks like birds in a tree and Lodie – that’s Mrs Bray’s maid – carries tales to Mrs Bray. And it wasn’t my business to be noticing what Marse Luke has on his desk. But blackmail is about secret writing, isn’t it?’
‘It could be,’ answered January slowly. ‘If I were blackmailing someone I’d be damn careful about what I put into writing. Last spring?’
‘Yes, sir. Long before he could have seen those number squares from Mr Singletary’s notebook … and I still can’t figure how he got hold of them.’
‘Unless he knew them before. Did Luke ever write in code to anyone?’
Mede laughed softly. ‘Mr J, Marse Luke doesn’t ev
en write to people in regular handwriting. He hates writing, and figuring, and numbers. It’s why this job he has at the Navy Yard is like a chain on him. He’s said to me he’d rather chop cotton than copy documents—’
‘There speaks a man who’s never chopped cotton.’
‘Well, true.’ Mede grinned again, as briefly as before. ‘Not that I’ve ever done field work, ’cept once when his daddy got mad at me when I was ten, for covering up when Marse Luke rode out to meet a girl his daddy didn’t like. Marse Charles put me out in the tobacco fields for a day and a half, ’cause I wouldn’t tell.’ He shook his head, then let the memory go: the hot stink of dirt, the thirst and the ache in back and arms and hands … January knew them well.
And remembered the pride and love in Luke Bray’s voice: It’s worth it seein’ you standin’ up there like an oak tree …
‘Does he have a mistress?’
Mede shook his head. ‘Not regular, no. There’s houses down near the Capitol, on Maine and Missouri Avenues, close enough to the Navy Yard that him and his friends will stop there early of an evening, after an oyster supper. But I don’t recall him ever speaking more of one girl than another, and he never could keep their names straight. And he never went in for the nasty stuff, or the strange stuff, like some of the Congress gentlemen do. Sure, nothing he’d pay somebody two or three hundred dollars a month not to talk about.’
‘You know this?’
‘Like I know myself, sir. I hear the girls downtown like him. Back home there was four of the girls on our place that he’d screw regular, but he wasn’t ever mean. And he’d give ’em presents, and not just for puttin’ out for him. At other times, just to be nice. I don’t think I ever heard of him forcin’ somebody who didn’t want to go, like a lot of men do.’
Given the malicious hell a planter’s son could make for any bondswoman who didn’t ‘consent’, this wasn’t saying much, but on an isolated plantation, January was aware that even this token forbearance qualified Luke Bray as a Galahad.
And yet … reflected January. And yet.
People sometimes found surprising things about themselves, once they reached a city and learned what was available.
And since he’d been employed at the Navy Yard, Luke Bray had, for the first time in his life, not been under Mede’s observation for the greater part of the day.
Again his hand sought in his pocket the folded sheet of magic squares, the link between Luke Bray and a shy, odd, fussy gentleman whom he had supposedly met only once in his life.
There was definitely something odd going on.
NINETEEN
In New Orleans, Easter was the start of the starving season for musicians.
Planters and their families would be returning to their plantations, to make sure the cane was in the ground – if it was going in that year – or to supervise the planting of the cotton, before the summer’s onflowing heat drove them to the little towns of Milneburg and Mandeville on the lakeside. January reflected upon the hundred and fifty dollars he’d left in Rose’s hands, and the forty or so that he’d accumulated here in Washington playing at balls and sent on to her, and was comforted.
May Eph Norcum catch fever and die.
The direction written on Bill the sweeper’s note was that of the King’s Head on C Street, in the insalubrious district between Pennsylvania Avenue and the canal. Guised as a laborer – and keeping a very sharp eye on his back – January made his way thence on Easter Monday afternoon and loafed around the neighborhood, scraping acquaintance with a slave named Pancake, who was sweeping the board sidewalk in front of a cheap grocery across the street from the tavern, and helping the slaves at the livery stable next door for a dime. He said his name was Lou Grima and that he was in Washington looking for work.
‘None around, unless you likes waitin’ on white men,’ returned Boston, one of the stablemen. ‘Even then, ’bout half the hotels buys fancy niggers to work their dinin’ rooms, rather’n hire free men.’
‘I heard there was work on that new Treasury buildin’,’ protested January in a pained voice.
‘They’s all Irish. They better not even catch you askin’ is there work.’
‘Animals,’ opined Jerry, the other raker of soiled straw. ‘Don’t even hardly speak no English. Papists, too.’
January spotted Wylie Pease almost at once and recognized him as the bald ferret-nosed man from Mrs Kelsey’s funeral. He emerged hatless and blinking from the King’s Head – the sign above the door was of a royally robed figure with nothing above its ermine-clad shoulders but a bleeding stump – in what looked like a nightshirt tucked into grimy trousers, looked around him at the street, spat, and went in again.
The livery was so situated that from its gate, January could see both the front door of the tavern and the mouth of the alley beside it. Like many Washington alleys, this one was built up with tiny houses, converted sheds, and the occasional garden-patch or cow house attached to the dwellings on the nearby streets, and swarmed with the children of the poor. He made no comment until he’d finished his shoveling and raking, and had helped haul water and hay for all fifteen animals, but in that time he observed the clientele of the tavern: carters, cabmen, tough-looking Irish b’hoys. He thought he recognized the sullen-faced youth from the cemetery, also in déshabillé. A lodging house on the premises, then.
Even in an ordinary boarding house, there was always someone around. A tavern would, however, guarantee where most of its denizens would be for most of the evening … and increase the chances that they would be in an unobservant condition.
‘They’re not taking any work across the way?’ He nodded at the grimy frontage of unpainted boards. ‘Place sure looks like it could use a little sprucin’ up.’
‘You don’t want to go inside any tavern in this neighborhood,’ said Boston firmly. ‘Nor around their back doors neither. That feller over there?’
January followed his nod and recognized the slave-stealer Kyle Fowler as the tall man stopped to trade words with one of the Irish draymen emerging from the nearby grocery.
‘He got three–four men workin’ this neighborhood regular. You want some liquor, you go over to one of the groceries on K Street, or Bissell’s on Madison Alley, or Singer’s on Naylor’s Alley. They’s safe, and run by freemen.’
‘’Sides—’ Jerry waved toward the tavern as Pease appeared in the doorway again, wearing a waistcoat this time and smoking a cigar, and carrying a bucket that slopped a brown horror of mucus and spat tobacco over his shoes that could be smelled across the street. ‘—Miz Drail got herself a boyfriend there regular who does all the sprucin’ she can stand.’ Pease tossed the contents of the bucket into gutter, went back inside. ‘Nasty piece of work.’
Boston laughed and inquired in a voice squeaky with mock wonderment, ‘Now, what would a modest lady like Miz Drail see in him?’ By the way Jerry laughed, January guessed everything he needed to know about the saloon’s owner even before that lady put in an appearance, diminutive, brass-haired and cursing as she shoved a youthful Irishman out into the muck of the street with a bloody nose.
January finished helping with the chores, collected his ten cents, bade the men goodby and went on his way with wishes for good luck and a great deal of the same advice that Trigg had given him about not drinking with friendly strangers. He remained in the neighborhood long enough to walk the streets all around the King’s Head, taking note of alleys, shops, and open lots. In childhood he’d scouted every foot of Bellefleur Plantation for hiding places and escape routes, for those occasions on which his master had had a few too many whiskies, and knew what to look for.
He was back on K Street well before the mild spring twilight drew on.
‘Is it like this farther North?’ he asked his hostess after dinner as Minou and Clarice Perkins herded the younger children into the parlor for lessons and Frank Preston turned up the lamps. ‘Always looking over your shoulder?’
‘Depends on how far north you get,’ said M
rs Trigg.
‘It used not to be,’ Preston amplified. ‘But even in Boston or Providence, it’s getting harder for a black man to find work. If an Irishman or a German wants a place in one of the new factories … Well, one of these days he’ll get citizenship, and vote. So the local Democrat ward-bosses help him apply. Then they’ll go to the factory owners and shop masters, and tell them, “I have a friend who needs work.” A black man is never going to be able to vote, so he’s of no use to the bosses. And now they’ve got the railroads through from Baltimore and Washington to pretty much anyplace in the North you can name, we get “special deputies” coming around, looking for runaways.’
‘Or anybody who looks like he might be a runaway.’
‘That’s it, I’m afraid.’ Preston tilted his head a little, to listen to the women’s voices through the door: Thèrése’s teasing laughter as she twitted one of her beaux, Dominique’s bright chatter of pomade and the price of coffee that broke off to praise Charmian when the child located a hidden letter-block.
Octavia Trigg started to gather up the silverware. ‘You thought it’d be different in the North, Mr J?’
‘Not really.’ January stood also and collected the few plates that remained on the table: Ritchie and Mandie had already made their first sweep and could be heard in the kitchen in a way that reminded him achingly of his own kitchen, of Gabriel and Zizi-Marie …
‘I’ve been to Mexico, and I lived in France. Both places where slavery doesn’t exist, and it still all comes down to money, and power, and what color your skin is.’
The landlady’s coal-dark eyes rested on him for a moment, as if reading in his words things that he wouldn’t say. ‘Why’d you come back?’
‘My family is here,’ said January simply. ‘When my wife died – the wife I married in France – I was willing to live with things as they are in Louisiana, so that I could be with my kin.’ Like Mede, he realized suddenly, drawn back toward slavery by love of his brother …
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