Knowing he'd be coming to the Cabildo that morning he had been careful to don his most respectable clothing: linen shirt, black wool coat, white gloves, gray trousers, and high-crowned beaver hat, the costume of a professional that he wore on those occasions when he volunteered his services to the Hospital and when he played at a ball. The men looked at him and then at one another. "Stabbed," said one in English at the same moment the other said, "Hung himself, poor bastard," in French. January looked down at the blanket, which was ancient and ragged and moving with lice. There was no sign of blood. The man who spoke English added, "We got to be gettin' on."
He watched them move around under the gallery to the little storeroom at the back of the court; watched them close and latch the door. His heart seemed to have turned to ice inside him. He knew, having seen the color of that arm, why they lied.
Glancing behind him, he saw that the Corbiers, Jumons, and officers of the law had left the watch room. Someone took back the chairs in which Olympe and C?lie Jumon had sat; a lamplighter came in from the arcade with a couple of bottles, beer or ale, which he handed to the sergeant at the desk. In the courtyard, a man who was being triced to the pillory suddenly began to thrash and heave like a landed fish, screaming curses at his master, at the men who bound him, at whatever god had ordered the world to be so constituted that this could be done to him. While everyone in the yard-except the man's master-ran to help, January made his way under the galleries to the storeroom, unlatched the door, and stepped noiselessly inside. Most of the time, January knew from past dealings with Lieutenant Shaw, the room was used as a storage place for records and for the shovels and buckets in use by those who cleaned up the gutters of the Place d'Armes. There was a cot in one corner where Guardsmen who sustained injuries in the line of duty could lie down-a situation not uncommon when a steamboat crew or a gang of keelboat ruffians were in town on a spree.
The form on the cot now was not a Guardsman. From beneath the tattered blanket the hand still projected, dangling to the floor, fingers purpling. Another body lay on the floor. Flies roared in every corner of the low ceiling, gathering already in the fluids that trickled slowly into the cracks of the brick floor.
The judas hole in the door let through just enough light to see. January pulled the blankets first from one man, then the other, and looked down into the bloated faces. An ugly orange flush mottled their skin and black vomit crusted their teeth and beards. One had clearly been a British sailor, with bare feet and a tarred pigtail; the other a trapper from the trackless mountains of northern Mexico, buckskin shirt stiff with sweat and filth. Both men already stank in the early summer heat. There was no question what had caused their deaths. He laid the blankets back over their faces, and silently left the room.
January feared he would be too late to hear any of the proceedings of the arraignment-which in any case he knew would be short-but when he hurried into the Presbyt?re building and through the door of the Recorder's Court, the Clerk was still engaged in an angry convocation with Lieutenant Shaw: "... just a minute ago," Shaw was saying mildly.
"The case has been called..."
"It is an outrage!" Gerard put in, fists clenched furiously. "An outrage! There is no truth..."
"I reckon Mr. Vilhardouin"-Shaw pronounced the French name properly, something that always surprised January about the Kentuckian-"just sorta made a stop at the jakes, and he'll be along... . There he is."
At the same moment a voice behind January said coldly, "I beg Monsieur's pardon..." An American voice added, "Get outa that door, boy."
January stepped quickly aside. Vilhardouin jostled brusquely past him, followed closely by a lithe, powerful man whose lower two shirt buttons strained over the slop of his belly beneath a food-stained yellow waistcoat's inadequate hem. As the two men proceeded up the aisle, the sloppy man paused here and there to nod greetings to this man or that: keelboat rousters in slouch hats and heavy boots, spitting tobacco on the floor; filibusters from the saloons along the levee; a gentleman sitting stiff and disapproving beside a shackled slave. The Clerk of the Court glared ferociously and demanded, "What brings you here, Blodgett?" and the man returned a stubbled and rather oily smile.
"It's an open court, Mr. Hardee." Blodgett's voice was gold and gravel, with a drunkard's slurry drawl. "Surely a man can come sit in an open court if he wants to."
As January slid onto the end of the bench beside Paul and Mamzelle Marie, Hardee knocked his gavel on the desk and said, "Are you C?lie Jumon, nee G?rard, wife of Isaak Jumon of this parish?"
She stood, small and pretty in her filthy dress. "I am."
"I object to these proceedings! " Monsieur Vilhardouin sprang to his feet. "Madame Jumon does not understand English and it is a violation of her rights to-"
"Monsieur Vilhardouin," protested the girl, "I understand-"
"Be silent!" ordered her father.
Vilhurdnuin turned back to the Clerk of the Court. "Madame Jumon does not sufficiently understand English to the degree that she can comprehend the charges brought against her."
Two louse-ridden and bewhiskered denizens of the Swamp and Girod Street applauded; a blowsy uncorseted woman hollered "You stand up for your rights, gal! " and Madame G?rard shrank against her husband in revulsion and terror.
A harried-looking notary was called in to translate, and asked in French if C?lie Jumon was in fact C?lie Jumon, then informed her that she was charged with feloniously conspiring to kill and slay Isaak Jumon, her husband, a free man of color of this city, on or about the night of the twenty-third to -fourth of June, and how did she plead? "Not guilty," she said, forcing her voice steady.
"Hell, honey, no shame about it," yelled the blowsy woman, "I killed four myself! " "Silence in the court." The Clerk spit tobacco into the sandbox beside him, a surprising display of fastidiousness given the wholesale expectoration going on all around him. "You are hereby remanded to custody until... Where'd that calendar go?" He shuffled the pages of the ledger handed to him. "Good Lord, who are all these folks? Damn Judge Gravier for leavin' town like this. Puts everybody back. Now Judge Danforth talkin' about goin', too..." "May it please the court." Vilhardouin stood again, somberly handsome in his exquisitely tailored black. "Given that the accused is below legal age, we request that she be released into the custody of her father. "
The Clerk straightened up, and glared at him in annoyance.
"Her father, a householder and taxpayer of this city, stands ready and willing to put up whatever security is required," went on the lawyer. "To be denied this by a Clerk of the Recorder's Court-not even the Recorder himself, who is apparently elsewhere today-What did you say the Recorder's name is, Monsieur Blodgett?"
Blodgett looked up from the notebook in which he was busily scribbling. "Leblanc," he said, in English, and more loudly than was necessary if Vilhardouin was the only one intended to hear. "Clerk's name is Hardee." He made another note.
Vilhardouin turned back to the bench. "Should Mr.-er-Hardee see fit to deny this mercy to both parent and child in Mr. Leblanc's absence, I fear that even the best efforts of Mr. Blodgett here will not suffice to make the story even remotely favorable when it appears tomorrow in the New Orleans Abeille. Mayor Prieur reads the Abeille-the Bee-does he not, Mr. Blodgett?" Blodgett helped himself to his hip flask, and wiped his stubbled underlip. "So he does, Mr. Vilhardouin. So he does."
The Clerk's face blotched an ugly red. He tapped his gavel sharply. "Prisoner is released to the recognizance of her father, Fortune G?rard, a free man of color of this city, on a bail of a thousand dollars, in respect for her tender years. You want me to have that translated into Frenchy, Mr. Vilardwan?" "Yes," said Vilhardouin, unruffled. "Please."
"Monsieur Gerard..." January half-turned on the bench as Gerard, Vilhardouin, Blodgett, Madame G?rard, and the trembling C?lie Jumon moved past them toward the court's outer doors. "If we could pool our information and resources..."
"Get your hands off me, M'sieu." The little man pulled
his arm away, although January's fingers had not actually come in contact with his sleeve. His face was cold and set. "I wish nothing to do with you, or your sister; and I tell you that should she attempt to spread calumny against my daughter or imply that she would do so vile a thing as to consult with her on any matter whatsoever, it will go the worse for her and for you all." "Papa..." "Be silent, girl!"
"Are you Olympia Corbier," cut in the Clerk's angry voice, "also known as Olympia Snakebones?
You are accused of conspiring to feloniously kill and slay one Isaak Jumon, a free man of color of this city, how the hell you plead?"
"Not guilty." When their mother beat her, January remembered, she had stood so.
"You're hereby remanded to custody..."
"Sir." January got to his feet. "Sir, my name is Benjamin January, a free man of color, brother to Madame Corbier." He was careful to speak his best and most educated English. "Sir, is there any possibility of releasing my sister into the custody of her husband? She is the mother of small children, and conditions in the Cabildo are such that to remain there would endanger her life.
There were two deaths from yellow fever in the jail last night, goodness knows how many others are infected-"
"That's a lie! " One of the well-dressed gentlemen at the back of the court jerked to his feet.
January recognized Jean Bouille, a member of the City Council, with a couple of chastened slaves in tow. "There is no yellow fever in New Orleans!"
"Who says there is?" The Clerk spit furiously. "There's been no such thing! That reporter gone?
Good. Cuthbert-" He turned to address the Constable of the Court. "This nigger's saying there's people dyin' of yellow jack in the jail, and that isn't true." He turned back, not to January, but glaring out across the other men and women in the courtroom. "It isn't true," he repeated in a loud, harsh voice. "And I better not hear you nor nobody else goin' around sayin' such a lie or you're gonna be in some trouble yourself."
January felt them behind him, glancing at one another, looking at the Constable, thinking about the cells they would return to after leaving this room. The silence was crushing.
"If your sister thinks the jail's so goddam unfit she shouldn't have killed a man. Sit down."
January stood for a moment more, caught between his rage and that silence. He had been a slave and had lived in the quarters until he was eight, old enough to know what all slaves and prisoners know about keeping their mouths shut.
"I said sit down."
He lowered his eyes respectfully and sat.
"And you keep your opinions to yourself, boy, if you don't want to be took up for contempt."
He bowed his head, the flush of fury-heat rising through him almost depriving him of breath.
"Yes, sir."
"Olympia Corbier, you are hereby remanded to custody of the city jail until the seventeenth of July of this year, when you will be tried by the Criminal Court of the State of Louisiana for your crime. Is there a Stefano DiSilva in this room? Stefano DiSilva, you're accused of willfully causin' a disturbance in Mr. Davis's gamblin' parlor on Bourbon Street..."
January caught up with Shaw in the arcade outside. "That wasn't a real wise thing of you to say, Maestro," the Kentuckian remarked mildly. Whatever coolness had tempered the morning was now long gone, the sunlight molten in the Place d'Armes; the crowds around the covered market had thinned. Close by their feet a couple of Chickasaw Indians remained, still peddling powdered sassafras and clay pots from a blanket spread on the Cathedral steps.
"It was the truth."
Shaw spit, and actually got the tobacco juice into the gutter, for a miracle. "I'd be mighty careful who you said that to. What with the hoo-rah concernin' the Bank of the United States, and everybody in a panic about interest, and elections comin' on, and summer business bein' slow generally, there's a lot of folk in this town who wouldn't take kindly to talk of epizootic fevers scarin' away investors." He glanced sidelong as Councilman Bouille stalked out of the Presbyt?re doors and held his silence until he was some twenty feet farther down the arcade. His thin, rather light voice was gentle. "Truth may be a shinin' sword in the hand of the righteous, Maestro, but unless you got one whale of a shield that sword may not do you no good."
January drew in a deep breath, trying to let his rage dissolve. Bouille's slaves trailed at his heels, back across the Cathedral steps and into the Cabildo again. January wondered what the men had done and how many silver bits the Councilman was going to pay over to the city for their "correction." The custom of the country, he told himself, and wondered why he had come back here from Paris. Going insane from grief wouldn't have been as bad as this, surely?
"I take it," he said, "that Isaak Jumon's body was never found?"
The Kentuckian shook his head. "Though I sorta wonder how your sister knowed that, right off as she did. That boy Antoine says he was sent away from this strange house in a carriage and let off someplace he doesn't know where. He wandered around for hours in the pourin' rain, he says, till he got hisself home again. But he did see his brother die. He was real clear on that. And there's a lot of territory to cover, swamps and bayous and canals all around this city where a body coulda been dumped, and we'd never be the wiser. We didn't just light on your sister out of arbitrary malice, you know, Maestro. When I asked her last night where she'd been Monday she wouldn't give no good account of herself, nor could that gal C?lie neither... Yes, what is it?" A Guardsman came running from the Cabildo, calling Shaw's name.
"Trouble over to the Queen of the Orient Saloon, sir." The man saluted.
"It's nine o'clock in the mornin'," said Shaw wonderingly, and shoved his verminous hat back on his head. "Iff n you'll excuse me, Maestro..."
He set off at a long-legged run.
January stood for a time in the sunlight of the Cathedral steps, watching him go. By this time, he thought, Olympe would have been returned to her cell, and he had had enough, for the time being, of Fortune Gerard's rage and Clement Vilhardouin's oil-smooth suaveness. He pushed open the Cathedral door, stepped through into the cool still gloom.
All that remained of the morning Mass was the smell of smoke and wax, and a market-woman telling her beads. A woman got quickly up from one of the benches usually reserved for the less prosperous of the free colored, a white woman in a pale blue gown, cornsilk hair braided unfashionably under a cottage bonnet. She was very American, prim and bare of a Creole lady's paint, and there was a hunted nervousness to her huge blue eyes as she retreated from him, drawing her child to her side.
More to it, thought January, than simply not seeing the person whom she clearly expected: a fear that was startled at shadows. He'd removed his hat already, so he dipped in a little bow and asked in his best English, "May I help you, Madame?"
Her gloved hand went quickly to her lips. "I-That is-No." She shook her head quickly, and looked around her at the shadowy dimness of the great church. "It is all right to sit here, is it not?"
"Of course it is;" said January. He'd encountered Protestants who seemed to believe Catholics sacrificed children on the altars of the saints.
The child peeked around her mother's skirts, guinea-gold curls dressed severely up under a small brown hat, sensible-and suffocating-brown worsted buttoned and tailored over the hard lines of a small corset; tiny brown gloves on tiny hands. She at least showed no fear, either of him or of this echoing cavern of bright-hued images and flickering spots of light. "The nuns won't come and get me," she whispered conspiratorially, "will they?"
January smiled. "I promise you," he told the child. "Nuns don't come and get anyone."
The mother tugged quickly on her daughter's hand, to shush her or discourage conversation with a black man and a stranger. January bowed again, and went to the Virgin's altar, and though money was tight and would be tighter-Pritchard had indeed, as Aeneas had warned, docked his pay last night-he paid a penny for a candle, which he lit and placed among all those others that marked prayers for mercy rathe
r than justice. Holy Mother, forgive her, he prayed, his big fingers counting off the cheap blue glass beads of the much-battered rosary that never left him. Don't hold it against Olympe's soul that she turned from you and your Son. Don't punish her for making little magics as she does. For serving false gods.
The woman's soft voice drew his attention. Looking back, he saw the person she had come here to meet. A small man, wiry and thin; a ferret face whose features spoke of the Ibo or Congo blood. He wore a shirt of yellow calico, and a leather top hat with a bunch of heron-hackle in it.
A blue scarf circled his waist-a voodoo doctor's mark, Olympe had said when she'd pointed the man out to January in the market one day, the same way the seven-pointed tignon was the sign of the reigning Queen.
January heard the woman say, "It has to work," and the man replied, "It'll work." He handed her something that she swiftly slipped into her bag.
Sugar and salt and Black Devil Oil to bring a straying lover home? Black wax and pins, to send an unwanted mother-in-law away?
It has to work.
The howl of a steamboat's whistle shrilled through the Cathedral as the woman opened the door.
She disappeared with her beautiful golden-haired child into the square, the voodoo-man watching-Dr. Yellowjack, Olympe had said his name was-as she walked away. When time enough had elapsed that their departures would not be too close, he, too, took his leave. January stayed for a long time, praying for his sister's soul while the candle he had lighted flickered before the Queen of Heaven's feet.
FOUR
January's mother and the younger of his two sisters were in the parlor of his mother's pink stucco house on Rue Burgundy when he reached it again. The two women sat side by side on the sofa, a mountain of lettuce-green muslin cascading over their knees; the jalousies were closed against the full strength of the sunlight, which lay across them in jackstraws of blazing gold. Ten o'clock was just striking from the Cathedral, and the gutters outside steamed under the hammer of the morning heat. Entering through the back door, January shed his black wool coat-that agonizing badge of respectability-hi s gloves, and his high-crowned hat and bent to kiss first the slim straight elderly beauty, then the white man's daughter who had from her conception been the favored child.
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