His voice like flint – his heart like flint in his chest – January replied, ‘She hoped we would know. If she wanted Minou dead she’d have found a way to kill her without alerting us all an hour later that she was gone.’
He led the way to the parlor door, and there was an awkward moment in the hall as the black members of the party – himself, Trigg, Preston and Leopold, who came running down the stairs again – turned automatically toward the rear of the house and the whites all turned toward the front door …
‘She wants us to stay and search for her,’ he said. ‘Just exactly as if she’d cut her and left her bleeding, knowing we’d stop and save Minou and let her go free.’
‘Cut her—’ Henri pressed his fat hands to his mouth. He was shaking all over and looked worse than the fainting man who’d been led up the stairs. ‘What has she—?’
‘At a guess,’ said January grimly, ‘she’s turned her over to Fowler and the slave traders.’
And clean against all custom – to the scandalized horror of Bray’s butler – the entire party, blacks and whites, went out through the front door to where the carriage waited in the drive.
Chloë caught up with them – springing out of a cab, ethereal in pale-pink satin and coruscating with diamonds – at just short of midnight on the front doorstep of the British Ministry. Sir Henry Fox was still out gambling somewhere, so Poe’s peremptory knock on the front door had at least been answered. But the rest of the Ministry staff – as the Scots butler had informed Poe in frosty accents – was long since abed.
‘Give Mr Oldmixton this, please,’ January had said, and handed the butler the note he’d written just before leaving Bray’s house. ‘I think he’ll see us.’
‘What happened?’ Chloë demanded as the Reverend Perkins jumped down from the cab driver’s box and the cab rattled away into the night. ‘This good man tells me—’
The Ministry door opened, and Mr Oldmixton stood framed in it, dark hair rumpled, swathed in a satin dressing-gown of gorgeous pattern and hue. ‘Rowena, what on earth—?’ He stopped short, surveying the assorted group of men and women, black and white, before him on the step.
‘You were able to read my message, then, sir?’ inquired January politely, and held out his hand for the note that Oldmixton still carried.
‘Your message?’ The Englishman made as if to thrust the note into his dressing-gown pocket, then grimaced, and handed it over.
24ØØ2224Ø3162419Ø711Ø81311202321Ø1Ø721Ø813Ø917Ø324242021121912Ø1Ø9 Ø8Ø92221Ø81013Ø424Ø8
‘Emergency,’ he quoted it, ‘all is discovered – by the mere fact that you’ve managed to encrypt that message I see that this is in fact the case – must see you at once. I perceive I am due for a few severe slaps upon my wrist from Lord Palmerston when I’m sent home. But what I’ve done is no crime, you know. Our nations aren’t at war – yet. Where is Mrs Bray?’
‘Probably halfway to Baltimore – sir,’ said January. ‘Having learned, sometime this afternoon, that we’d discovered the whereabouts of Selwyn Singletary—’
The startled flare of hope in Oldmixton’s eyes confirmed what January had suspected, and he went on, ‘Her one idea was to delay pursuit until she could get clean away. Since, as I understand, you employ Mr Kyle Fowler, I think Mrs Bray kidnapped my sister and her child and turned them over to him, knowing we would follow that scent rather than hers. And since Mr Fowler is no idiot, I think the first thing he’ll do is get his new merchandise out of Washington, so I hope, sir, that you’re going to make matters easier for us by telling us where Fowler has his headquarters and where he’d take a prime fancy for quick sale.’
‘Come inside – McAleister!’ Oldmixton shouted over his shoulder as he stepped from the doorway to admit them. And, when the butler appeared: ‘McAleister, send to the stables and have them saddle—’ He ran a calculating eye over the group on the steps. ‘Have them saddle Rufus and Masianello and six other horses … I shall be down again in a moment—’ He turned toward the steps, then halted in a swirl of purple-and-green satin robe-skirts: ‘Where is Singletary? Is he alive? Is he well?’
‘I don’t know how well he is, sir,’ replied January, ‘but he was alive this morning. He’s been held at Gurry’s private insane asylum since October – and I only trust that Mrs Bray was in too much of a hurry to get out of town to go back and poison him after she kidnapped my sister.’
‘I’ll go there now,’ said Chloë. ‘Mr – Rivers, is it?’ She addressed the hired coachman. ‘Mr Rivers, do you know the road out of Alexandria—?’
Oldmixton protested, ‘It’s midnight, my dear girl—!’
‘Twelve twenty-eight.’ She plucked Henri’s watch from his pocket and checked it. ‘If she administered poison to him at ten, I should probably be in time, if I can get in. I don’t suppose you could write me a warrant, sir? Henri—’
‘I’m going with Ben.’ Henri turned toward his wife with sudden dignity. ‘It’s my doing that Dominique came with us here at all. I have to be with them. I have to—’
‘Of course you do, dearest.’ Chloë stood on tiptoe, to kiss his heavy cheek. ‘I was only going to say, if you’ll be riding – I’m going to take the carriage to the asylum – borrow a scarf from Mr Oldmixton … Mr Poe, might I ask you to accompany me? We’ll work out exactly what our relationship is to Mr Singletary on the way. Do you happen to know if she took her jewelry? No? Then I suggest you send someone back there. Dealers don’t pay more than thirty percent of market value, and she won’t have enough to establish herself if she suspects her bank accounts are going to be watched. She’ll need something that can be converted to cash immediately. Take care of him, Ben.’ She turned to January, regarded him with huge, pale eyes like a sibyl, behind the thick rounds of glass. ‘And of yourself.’
For a moment something else flitted across her eyes: fear for the husband her family had pushed her into marrying? Regret, that he was riding off to rescue his mistress, even a mistress whom she liked? Or just puzzlement about how to wish someone luck when one didn’t believe in luck or miracles?
Then she turned, straight as a soldier in her lace and diamonds, caught up her skirts and ran back to the carriage, where Mr Rivers had already sprung on to the box. Poe looked uncertain, but January said, ‘Go,’ not needing to explain that with Henri and – it now seemed – Oldmixton, they had the requisite compliment of white witnesses to whatever else the night would bring.
Like a raven in his black greatcoat Poe dashed to the carriage. The door wasn’t even shut when Esau Rivers flicked the reins, and the horses – sweaty but game – broke into a gallop down the wide processional expanse of Twenty-Sixth Street, and vanished into the night.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Kyle Fowler worked out of a tavern called the Golden Calf, in Reservation C. There was a pen out back of the usual sort, with stout plank walls twelve feet tall and a shed built across one side. It was to this pen that Elsie Fowler conducted Oldmixton and his party, with a great show of indignation at being ‘rousted’ at a quarter to one in the morning, as if she’d been asleep instead of pouring out stale beer ‘needled’ with camphor to men watching two ‘waiter girls’ fight in their chemises for a five-dollar purse.
‘We got practically no stock this week,’ groused the woman, with a sidelong glance at January and Trigg, who accompanied the Englishman inside. ‘Greedy goddam bastards, think we’re made of money – say, you wouldn’t be interested in selling those two boys of yours, would you, mister? We pay cash, three hundred on the barrel-head, no questions asked … That big buck of yours looks like a prime field-hand, we’d go three-fifty …’
‘I am the one asking the questions, Madame,’ retorted Oldmixton. ‘Is Mr Fowler about?’
She held up her lamp as she led the way into the yard. January followed; Trigg remained in the doorway, one hand in the pocket of his coat where he kept a slung shot, the other hand unobtrusively close to the pistol hidden in his waistband. January bore his own pistol a
nd knife, hidden as always, plus another pistol lent him by Oldmixton, who openly carried a rifle. An uncovered latrine pit on the far side of the yard filled the air with its reek. January felt the furious longing to empty his weapon into the woman’s broad calico back as she walked along the open front of the shed with her lamp.
‘Kyle’s gone down to Fauquier County; he’ll be back Saturday for that ball game …’
Oldmixton returned to the doorway, and January said quietly, ‘Check the cellars, sir.’
There were four cells in the cellar, windowless and stinking. None was occupied, but by the smell, two had been in use recently. Again January stayed in the doorway, Trigg on the stair. This was no time to get trapped underground, and there was no telling how desperate the Fowlers were, or if they thought they could get away with murdering a British Ministry secretary to protect themselves from a possible accusation of treason.
Given the current state of the Washington constabulary, reflected January, maybe they actually could. Oldmixton held the lamp he carried close to each of the cells’ walls, and checked the masonry in the storeroom where the establishment kept beer and coals as well. The lamplight wasn’t strong, and it would be all too easy to miss something, but at least there probably wasn’t a sub-cellar. This close to the canal, the clayey earth underfoot squished from seepage. The fetor was stunning.
‘Let me see your stable,’ said Oldmixton.
‘Look, Me Lord,’ protested Elsie Fowler, ‘if you think Kyle and me ain’t been livin’ up to our side of our bargain, you just say so, and we’ll—’
‘I said, let me see the stable. I don’t care how many laws you break but I do demand that you don’t go making side deals with my other employees without telling me of it.’
‘Ain’t nuthin’ in the stable.’ The woman’s face seemed to darken and sink in on itself. ‘See,’ she added as she led the way through a gate to another narrow yard. ‘Nuthin’ here.’
From the stable gate, January saw the Englishman bend down with his lamp, examining the dirt. There was, in fact, nothing in the stable – not even the two massive white-footed draft-horses. The wagon, too, was missing. The tracks leading to the outer gate looked fresh.
Wheel tracks, and the traces of many bare feet.
‘Fowler’s spoken of contacts in Fredericksburg,’ said Oldmixton, when they regained the muddy street.
‘From there they can get a steamboat down the Rappahannock to the bay,’ said Preston. ‘Either that, or they’ll head north to Baltimore.’
There was a pause, and Henri, sitting awkwardly on the largest and sturdiest of the British Ministry’s horses, made a little whimper of despair. ‘What can we do? There aren’t enough of us to split up—’
‘We’ll have to,’ said January. ‘Mr Oldmixton, would you be so good as to take charge of the Fredericksburg contingent? Preston – Reverend—’ He rapidly gauged strong and weak, black and white.
‘I know the Baltimore road pretty well,’ volunteered Trigg.
‘Leopold—’ January switched to French and beckoned the valet. ‘You’d better come with us.’ In English he continued, ‘Remember to check inside the wagon bed. And remember they may be drugged. If there’s trouble,’ he added to Henri as they, Trigg, and the still-incomprehending valet set out at a hand-gallop through the night-bound streets towards New York Avenue and the Baltimore pike, ‘stay back and don’t get yourself shot, sir. You’re the only proof we have that we’re not rebelling slaves.’
‘Shot?’ Henri glanced down in panic at the rifle sheathed on his saddle, then flung January a helpless look as they left the last dark, scattered dwellings of the town’s outskirts behind them. The waning moon glinted on the bottomlands of Goose Creek; here and there birds flew up, startled by their passing.
Minou, thought January, wherever you are, Minou, hang on …
The horses lengthened their stride.
They passed through Bladensburg over the East Branch of the Tiber; the moon was sinking. It was the season of planting-out tobacco seedlings and the night was thick with the smell of new-turned soil. More often, the formless dark that stretched on either side of the road smelled of damp weeds, of thick untended grass, for after nearly two hundred years under tobacco the soil yielded little. The planters whose brick houses could still be glimpsed in the dappled starlight now lived, more and more, by the sale of unwanted or unneeded slaves.
They pressed on. Rising, the river fog swallowed the fingernail moon, and they kindled torches, though the light made January uneasy. They’ll see us coming …
Far ahead through the trees, where the road curved a little back on itself, he saw the answering glimmer of fire.
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee …
Help us out here …
The wagon was stopped, waiting for them. Six women sat on its benches, holding small children close. Twice that number of men, chained neck to neck, ankle to ankle, grouped up around the team, so that Fowler and the two men with him stood more or less in the clear by the wagon’s tail. Torches were wedged into cracks in the back of the wagon, and flecks of burning pitch dripped down to smoulder on the ground beneath.
As January, Henri and Leopold rode into the torchlight, Henri sobbed, ‘She isn’t here!’
‘The wagon’s got a hollow bed,’ replied January, in the French in which the fat man had addressed him. ‘She’ll be inside it, drugged.’
Henri straightened his back at that, urged his horse forward. ‘M’sieu Fowler—’ His voice squeaked with terror. ‘I’m glad we’ve caught you. I believe you have two women and a child among your slaves to whom you have no right.’
Fowler spat. The male slaves clustered around the wagon, the women sitting behind and above them watched in silence, eyes a wet glint of silver in the torchlight. The slave stealer stepped forward, hand held out to shake, said in his soft voice, ‘And you’d be?’
Henri blushed, hastily dismounted – January wanted to shout at him not to give up the advantage of horseback – and held out his hand in response. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he apologized. ‘My name is Henri Viellard, of New Orleans, and I’m—’
Don’t get away from your rifle—!
Fowler caught Henri’s outstretched hand and dragged him forward, with his other hand – a pistol held by the barrel – dealt him a brutal crack on the side of the head that dropped him sprawling. January spurred his horse forward, pulled his own pistol from his waistband, knowing already he couldn’t use it: not with the wagon full of women and children behind Fowler in the line of fire. He yelled, ‘Drop it!’ hoping that would work, and it didn’t. Fowler shot at him at a distance of less than six feet, and pain went through his side like a javelin of fire.
The next second another man sprang out of the darkness at him, dragged him from the saddle. The horse reared, squealed, toppled under the double weight. January tried to struggle free of the writhing tangle of hooves and legs and stirrup leather, unable to breathe, his vision fragmenting under the cold dizziness of shock and pain. He hit the ground hard, snatched at the legs of the new attacker to pull him off-balance. Fowler reached him in two steps and kicked him with brutal force in the belly.
Henri sobbed, ‘For the love of God! I’ll pay you what you ask!’
Fowler paused, looked back at him.
Lying at Fowler’s feet, January had a queer, faraway glimpse of Henri held between two of Fowler’s ruffians – one with a pistol, the other holding a shotgun – close by the back of the wagon. He didn’t know where Leopold was – the whole scene occupied the space of instants, bloody in torchlight – but he thought, Trigg can’t shoot for fear of hitting the women …
From within the wagon, hollow in the wooden coffin, a child’s voice screamed, ‘Papa!’
‘Can’t risk it.’ Fowler spat again. ‘Like I can’t risk keepin’ your buck here, much as it pains me to waste him.’
He pointed his pistol down at January’s head.
The woman sitting closest to th
e back of the wagon – barely a girl herself, a child Charmian’s age in her arms – reached over with her foot and kicked the nearest torch so that it fell on to the back of the man with the shotgun.
The man screamed, lurched around as his shirt caught fire, and Henri – with the slightly startled air of an actor just recalling his cue – simply took the shotgun away from him and, at a distance of five feet, emptied it into Fowler’s belly.
The kick threw him backwards out of the path of the bullet that his other guard fired at him – one of the women in the wagon screamed. Henri waded forward, holding the shotgun by the barrel, and smote the man across the side of the head with it as if he were playing town ball after all. January knew there was another ruffian nearby and grabbed the pistol Fowler had dropped – the man was almost cut in half by the shotgun blast and was certainly dead as he fell – and rolled as the last ruffian fired at him. The bullet plowed the dirt next to his head, and January saw him framed neatly in the torchlight against the night, nowhere near the wagon. It was a perfect shot, and January pulled the trigger, the pain of the kick – he’d been shot in his right side – almost making him pass out.
The man fell dead.
I’m not going to confession about that one.
The horses were whinnying and shying, but the man whose shirt was burning made no sound. As January pulled himself, half-swooning, to his hands and knees he saw him, dead a little ways from the wagon, as Trigg and Leopold rode into the torchlight, holding pistols on the ruffian Henri had felled.
Trigg sprang off his horse, ran to January’s side. ‘How bad you hit?’ He was already pulling a bandanna from his pocket, pressing it to the wound.
January shook his head, too shaken to speak. Henri fumbled, sobbing, at the back of the wagon, and from within Charmian’s voice sobbed again, ‘Papa! Papa!’
‘M’sieu Viellard!’ cried Thèrése’s voice.
One of the women in the wagon said, ‘Catch over there on the side, sir.’
Good Man Friday Page 27