Crimson Angel

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘No wonder Don Demetrio spends most of his time with his mistress in Santiago,’ murmured Rose, setting down a stack of letters from Don Absalon to his lawyers and drawing her yellow silk shawl up over her shoulders again. ‘And no wonder his poor wife—’ She turned back to look across the dark of the yard between the wings of the house and said softly, ‘Oh, damn.’

  January followed her gaze.

  The card game had subsided into the silence of absolute concentration, the planter, his sisters, and his mother completely absorbed in their play.

  Doña Jacinta was gone.

  So was Hannibal.

  ‘We did nothing!’ protested the fiddler, considerably later in the evening, when he returned to his chamber. January, who’d sat up in a card game of his own with Rose as the lights went out in the main house and the wing across the yard, gave him a sidelong look. It was true that first Hannibal, then Doña Jacinta, had returned to the rear gallery fairly promptly, but January had been on pins and needles, watching Don Demetrio, until they did.

  He also knew that Hannibal could accomplish a great deal towards the winning of a woman’s heart in an astonishingly short span of time.

  ‘The question isn’t what you did, but what you plan to do in the future.’

  ‘The girl is lonely,’ said Hannibal. ‘And frightened – she told me how he uses her – and desperate. He—’

  ‘I know all about what he does to her,’ returned January quietly. ‘I’ve talked to the servants. But first, I’d rather we didn’t lose what seems to be the best chance we have to trace de Gericault and whatever his secret might be – and I’m less than halfway through the materials in those trunks. And second –’ he hardened his voice as Hannibal opened his mouth to protest what January himself knew was a heartless view of the case – ‘I’d rather you weren’t the cause of that poor girl getting another beating for slipping away to whisper sweet nothings with one of her husband’s guests.’

  Hannibal looked aside, his mouth taut under the graying fringe of his mustache.

  At least he didn’t protest – as nine out of ten men would – we won’t be caught …

  Behind him, January could feel Rose’s torn silence. ‘There is very little that we can do,’ he went on after a moment. ‘Unless you’re prepared to get her away not only from him, but also from Cuba entirely, the best thing that you can do for her is to leave her alone. According to the servants, her family are the ones who arranged her marriage to Don Demetrio, so it’s unlikely they’ll come to her rescue. More likely, they’ll report to him any plea for help.’

  Hannibal dropped his voice to a furious whisper. ‘The man is a tyrant! The life that poor girl is leading—’

  ‘We are running for our lives,’ said January. ‘We can’t—’ He turned his head sharply at the sound of soft scratching at the louvers of the French window. His eyebrows went up; Hannibal shook his head with an expression of innocence and surprise. I knew nothing about this, honestly …

  But even before he reached the jalousie to open it, Doña Jacinta slipped through, a couple of dark silk shawls wrapped around her shoulders, her midnight hair braided down her back like a young girl’s, and only the thinnest of batiste nightdresses sheathing her slim form. She saw January and Rose, and drew back. Even in the light of the few candles, January could see the flush that dyed her face. Hannibal put a hand on her wrist. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, though January could see that the disconcerted expression on his face at her semi-clothed appearance was genuine. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Jacinta?’

  ‘It isn’t what you think.’ Her glance darted to Rose and January again, then to Hannibal. ‘Can they be trusted?’

  ‘Of course! But truly, you shouldn’t—’

  ‘I will take that risk.’ She looked up into his face – she stood barely taller than a fourteen-year-old girl – clutching her shawls close around her shallow breasts. ‘Hannibal – Señor Sefton –’ she corrected herself self-consciously – ‘I think I would take any risk, to get out of this place. You said you would help me.’

  ‘Not at the risk of putting you further into your husband’s bad graces.’

  ‘I am not in his bad graces.’ She turned those haughty dark eyes toward January and Rose again, and in the candlelight he saw the glimmer of tears. ‘Satan isn’t angry at the sinners in Hell, Señor Sefton. They are sinners. They’re there for him to torment. It is as it should be, to him. That’s the worst of it, I think: that my husband isn’t even angry when he says I’m out chasing after men … Which I do not do! Which I never did!’ Passion shook her voice, but it never grew louder than a whisper, and Hannibal drew her into the room and away from the windows as January pinched out two of the candles and carried the third one into the door of his own little chamber, leaving the room dark, as if all within were innocently asleep.

  ‘It’s just the way women are, he says … And they need to be locked up, like bitches in their season.’ She faced January, trembling. ‘When my husband has Claudio tie me to the bed, so that he can have his marital rights when I refuse him – when I try not to be gotten with child—’

  She bit her lip, steadying herself, and added, ‘Believe me, I would not have come to you so – naked like a puta – if Madame didn’t take my clothes away from me, as she does every night, and lock them in a cupboard in her room. My sisters-in-law take turns sleeping in my room with me, in my bed with me, but Griselda had a few too many cups of wine and is snoring like a muleteer. Please listen to me.’

  Hannibal put his hands around hers, wrapped as they were in the silk of the shawls. ‘Of course—’ He visibly bit off another word, probably querida or corazón …

  ‘When you go to Havana,’ she said, and her low voice shook, ‘will you take a message for me? It isn’t to my parents, but to my cousin Enrique. He’s the only one of the family who won’t write to my husband, telling him that I’m trying to get away from him. Enrique has been to Spain, and to America, and has studied and doesn’t believe the whole good of a woman’s life is to bear her husband children. Will you do that?’

  ‘Of course.’ He didn’t even glance at January.

  From beneath her shawls she produced a folded sheet of paper – when January saw it later, in daylight, he saw it was the sheet out of a ledger book.

  In a whisper even softer, she went on, ‘Don Demetrio lied to you. Guibert Gericault did write to him from America, from New Orleans—’ She held up a second folded sheet. ‘He keeps this in his desk, even still, even now, after all those years. You must give this back to me, and I’ll put it back tomorrow. They were very dear to one another. What he says in the letter hurt my husband very much, although it is every word of it true.’

  She put the paper into Hannibal’s hand.

  EIGHTEEN

  Hispaniola Plantation

  Grand Isle, Louisiana

  October, 1810

  Metrio,

  You remember that old nigger Pardo, that Papa got into such trouble for killing back in the year of the big hurricane? Never a more blockheaded disobedient buck ever stood up on his hind legs. He’d run off into the jungle, and when he was brought back Papa would whip him with the lead whip till the bones showed through the blood. He’d starve him, break his bones, pull out his teeth, cut off fingers and toes, put him in chains, and put him to every kind of rotten job on the place; nothing you could do to that nigger would make him obey, even when he KNEW what Papa would do. And I’d watch Papa doing this and think, Why doesn’t that stubborn son of a bitch just knuckle under and be a good nigger?

  Papa just got back from New Orleans. There’s not a man in that city will give him credit, now that all the banks are in the hands of the Americans. He’s spoke with about a dozen of the big planters – Marigny and Trepagier and Allard – and they all say the same. They’d surely like to help, but with the Americans moving in, times are tight. They can offer him work, they can offer us shelter, they’re happy to extend charity, but we’re just refugees.
We’re just people who got ourselves kicked out of two places, and there’s only so much they can do.

  We’re all right (they say) here on with Aunt Oliva on Hispaniola. We have a place to live, acres to farm, even if they belong to that sanctimonious cripple Vitrac. What more do we want?

  What indeed?

  I’m writing to tell you, I’ve had enough. It’s time for me to take my own advice, to knuckle under and be a good nigger.

  Havana is crawling with men who I know, for God’s own truth, their fathers were casta – musterfino and yellow as cheese – who left their end of the island and come to Havana and pass themselves off as white. Back in Saint-Domingue, every other white man you saw had a grandma or great-grandma as black as pitch. (Hell, our butler was lighter than I am!) But move to another city, and take an Italian or maybe a Spanish name, and say, ‘I’m white,’ and they’re asked to every house in the town.

  If they can pass for white men, then I can pass for an American.

  I speak English without flaw now. I’ve been working for a year on my accent. If I go to someplace like Boston, all they’ll think is that I’m from someplace like Virginia. In the territories, nobody asks if the name you go by is really your own: how can they check on you? A Spanish man won’t do; a French man won’t do. So to hell with them all. I’m American, from the soles of my shoes to the bear grease in my hair, and the devil take the man who refuses me help or money or a hearing then.

  I will turn my coat and dress like an American in their tweeds and checks and flappy pantaloons. I will turn my name, so that no man can say to me, ‘He is a foreigner – no money for him.’ I will turn my life, so that no man will turn away from me.

  It will be some time before I write to you, or to Papa, or to anyone from Cuba or Saint-Domingue. I have to be able to say, ‘Ah, that’s a man I met when I was traveling in the Caribbean …’ It’s a hard world, Metrio, and harder for those who have no money. It is as if I go to a far country, to make my fortune before I can return to my old friends.

  I hope you understand. Papa doesn’t. And so Papa will die in another man’s house, eating the bread another man chooses to give him, because he’s too proud to change. Because he’s too proud of being a Frenchman, too proud of having been master back in Saint-Domingue, once upon a time.

  But I will think of you often, and look forward to the day when we can again be friends.

  Always your brother,

  Gui

  Only, the scrawling handwriting made the signature look like ‘Gil’.

  I’m a-turn my coat, I’m a-turn my name, I’m a-turn myself, the orisha had said, through the lips of the priest he rode.

  January had known both men and women, who had made the decision to become passe-blanc. To turn away from their families and friends. In the territories, nobody asks if the name you go by is your own: how can they check on you?

  Rose had teased her brother: Jeoffrey is no longer good enough?

  For a fair-complected man of African parentage, the stakes were far higher than money – to become a man who couldn’t be whipped for disobedience until the bones showed through the blood. Still, January was familiar with the sting of sadness, and of anger, at those who chose to turn their backs, not only on what they were themselves, but also on what their friends and family were as well.

  To trade everything you had, and were, for everything you could become.

  To pretend that those you had loved – those who had loved you – were nothing, and never had been.

  No wonder Demetrio Gonzago was angry.

  If they can pass for white men, then I can pass for an American …

  Jefferson Vitrack. Jeoffrey Vitrac.

  Lazaro Ximo’s long finger pointing at the shells, He wrote a letter – Gilbert did …

  Not Guibert. Gilbert.

  Not Gericault …

  ‘Jericho,’ he said, and handed the letter back to Doña Jacinta.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Let’s check the port records,’ he said, turning back to Hannibal, ‘for a name that sounds like Gericault. He could be calling himself Andrew Jackson in an effort to sound more American, of course – but I think a trip back to Santiago is in order. And then probably to Havana. With luck our friend will be in town by then, and we can get a look at him and figure out where to go from there.’

  After some discussion it was agreed that Rose would remain at Hispaniola Plantation and continue the work of sorting through the records the de Gericaults had left behind. ‘Our second line of defense is to find out what old Dr Maudit had on de Gericault’s father,’ she said, when their young hostess had slipped away into darkness again. ‘And the sooner we do that, the better. De Gericault – or whatever his name is now – knows we’re coming here to Cuba. It’s only a matter of time before he comes knocking on Don Demetrio’s door.’

  ‘You think Don Demetrio would let him in?’

  ‘He kept Guibert’s letter.’

  Thus, on the following morning, January and Hannibal rode over the pass to Santiago and spent an extremely cautious day inquiring of Rosario at the Fonda Velasquez – and of Captain Castallanos, who was in port on his way back from Jamaica – if any Americans had come into the town asking after a couple of color, or after the de Gericault family, or Hispaniola Plantation. If any of those Americans were named Maddox, or had been accompanied by dark-faced men named Killwoman or Conyngham …

  None.

  Was Castallanos bound back to Havana soon?

  A day, two days …

  An agreement was reached. Having been Don Demetrio Gonzago’s guest for a week, Hannibal still had most of the money he’d won in La Balize and at the Marquesa’s in Havana. ‘And it’s a wonder I do,’ he added as they rode out of the little town the following morning, ‘considering how that old witch Doña Elena cheats.’

  Rose and January spent most of the evening patiently plowing through correspondence regarding Absalon de Gericault’s lawsuit with Cousin Neron, which had still been in the courts when the Bastille fell and rioting swept the streets of Paris, while Hannibal copied odes in Greek from a volume of Theocritus he’d stolen from Cousin Silvestro’s library at Deliciana Plantation the previous week.

  ‘I’m tempted to simply tear them out,’ he explained, ‘but one of Silvestro’s penniless uncles is a scholar, so I do actually want to get the volume back to him intact. ψυχῆς ἰατρὸς τὰ γράμματα …’

  ‘I must say, my heart aches for poor Amalie.’ Rose lowered a sheet dated April of 1780. ‘However much everyone’s always saying what a charming, kindly gentleman Grandpa Absalon was, he seems to have been as much of a domestic tyrant as Don Demetrio. Here’s a letter to his lawyer in Paris inquiring if it’s possible to sue Cousin Neron for false pretenses and entrapment, because Amalie “is incapable of bearing a healthy child”, without surrendering the legal right their still-unborn son has to the de Gericault title. He also accuses Cousin Neron of dosing Amalie with some “perfidious substance” before the marriage, to ensure that she would not bear “normal” babies.’

  ‘Hence his employment of Maurir, as far as I can make out.’ January looked up with distaste from the shuffle of letters, account books, and a kitchen slate that lay on the table before him. ‘My recollection is that a number of his articles involved congenital malformations of the bones, so Don Demetrio is right about him being an expert in heredity. Possibly, Absalon was trying to find proof that Cousin Neron “knew” in some fashion that Amalie would give birth to fragile children … You haven’t found any further letters from Maurir to Absalon, have you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Rose rearranged the combs that held her hair up off her neck. ‘We still have half of this trunk and all of the last one to go. But, as of that batch you’re looking through now, he was certainly working for Absalon by 1781.’

  ‘And well enough in his trust to be purchasing slaves for him.’ January glanced at the slate before him, with its list of names. ‘And not all of them s
how up on the daybooks of the plantation, either. He writes that he’s sending them to the other plantation, L’Ange Rouge. But it sounds like he’s spending a lot on them – four thousand livres for a “house servant”, and almost that much for another “manservant of fair complexion”.’

  ‘Was a livre in 1781 the same as a franc now?’

  ‘Almost. Four maidservants—’

  ‘Sounds like he’s getting the house ready for Amalie to be sent there. Maybe he did murder her.’

  There was a faint scratching at the jalousie. With barely a creak of the floorboards, Hannibal slipped across to it, opened it a crack and slipped outside. He was in shirtsleeves in the heat of the night; January saw him dig something from his trouser pocket and hand it to the dim form that vanished almost immediately into the rainy darkness. ‘I hope and trust,’ he said, ‘that you’re not doing anything that’s going to jeopardize Rose’s position here, should certain female members of the Gonzago family start wagging their tongues when you and I are gone?’

  ‘Upon the lyre of Apollo I swear it.’ Hannibal lifted his hand. ‘Whatever his sisters say, our host has enough regard for a man’s property – with all due respect and apologies, Fair Athene –’ he bowed to Rose, who gave him a sidelong glance over the rims of her spectacles – ‘to at least wait for our return before he takes me to task about carrying letters for her.’

  ‘And that packet contained …?’

  ‘Opiates,’ said Hannibal. ‘At Jacinta’s request I visited a botica in Santiago yesterday afternoon while you were chatting with old Rosario—’

  ‘And you still think her cousin Enrique is going to defy their family, leap on his white horse and come here to rescue her? Did your adventures in Santiago also involve a visit to a blacksmith versed in the manufacture and cutting of keys?’

  Hannibal managed to look shocked. ‘Benjamin!’

  ‘She got out of her room Wednesday night before you’d been to Santiago,’ pointed out Rose, thumbing through the borrowed Theocritus. ‘So she’s either learned to pick that lock—’