by Parry, Owen
Against a lull in the tumult and breakage, I told her, “I know the portrait is of Mr. Champlain. Give it to me now. I will not keep it.”
She wept as bitterly as Mary Magdalene upon the day they nailed Christ to the cross. Had I known any less of her cruelty, I would have pitied her much.
“Give me the portrait now,” I repeated. “Or I will have the lads take it from you and your treasure may suffer a damage. Give it to me. You shall have it back before I leave.”
She hesitated as if asked to give up the life of her first-born. Although that was not her relation to Mr. Champlain.
I did not say another word, but let her take her time. All but one of the soldiers soon lost interest. They took themselves off in search of more advantage.
The old woman’s face—for she was reduced to nothing but an aged, broken creature—humbled itself inches from my boots. As if the weight of her tears pulled her brow to the carpet. Her hands were bleeding from the broken glass, yet she clutched the portrait as if it were alive. As if it were her only source of comfort.
“A man like you could never understand,” she said.
I ALLOWED MRS. AUBREY to dress anew and recollect her composure. Meanwhile, I studied the little oil portrait of the youthful Mr. Champlain, picking away what bits of glass I could. A shame it was that the photographic image, that wonder of our age, had not been extant in the days of his youth. The painting showed a rather dashing fellow, robust and not yet corpulent.
The artist’s brush must have been very fine. Despite the medium’s crudity, you saw a lad intelligent and reckless, with a strong, determined forehead shadowing lips that would have suited a woman of temperament. His hair was long, in the style of my parents’ day, a fashion lost but for illustrated books. It would not suit our close-hewn, modern age.
Now, you will think me addled by my newfound taste for novels, but as I studied the portrait I imagined that it captured a golden moment, a life’s premature meridian, when the young man fixed in brushstrokes must have felt that all before him would be triumph. Although his sun was tipping into decline.
I do not wish to moon about the matter, but I felt that the portrait, for all the sitter’s dash, foresaw some tragedy. As if the painter had realized more than young Champlain in his gilded hour of glory. Of course, artistic people, although generally unsuitable, seem to have a knack for that sort of thing.
What mattered was the question of identity, of course. For all the deformity of flesh that had accrued to Mr. Champlain over the years, you did not doubt that you saw the very same fellow.
Prince Hal had become Falstaff.
Mrs. Aubrey reemerged from her bedchamber attired in black and markedly subdued. Still, a docile viper remains a viper.
I offered her the portrait. She took it, calmly, in a hand wrapped in a handkerchief. A crust of blood formed at the edge of the cloth.
“Now we must have a talk,” I told her, “the two of us.”
She did not speak, but started down the stairs.
I had the sergeant gather the soldiers and drive them from the house. They clanked with booty, much enriched, though still greedy for more. They grumbled, but went out.
A private as Irish as hunger lugged a ham, into which he had already gnawed a cavity.
In the parlor, I set two chairs to rights, then placed a lantern on the floor between us. As Mrs. Aubrey took her place, the light from below gave her a devilish look. But her aspect no longer menaced. Instead, it seemed the stuff of clumsy comedy. She was a devil fit for Punch and Judy.
“You have no proof,” she said coolly. “You can’t prove anything. But you know that, of course. That’s why you indulged in this … this performance.”
“No, mum, there is true. I have no proof. At least none that will do for a court of law.”
“Still, I underestimated you, Major Jones. The error disappoints me. It was as foolish as it was ungracious.”
I glanced at the ruin around us. Convinced their luck could grow no worse, the soldiers had smashed a great mirror, as well as tearing paintings with their bayonets. The ships that had cruised her walls would sail no more. There were so many bits strewn on the floor it looked like the Apocalypse in Staffordshire.
“Well, we are quits,” I lied. “Woman or no, I would hang you if the law allowed me to do it. But I have taught you a lesson, there is that much, and you will not engage in such trade again. We will be watching, mind.” I gestured toward the wreckage. “And you will have this evening to remember me by.”
“It must be a great annoyance,” she said, become the cat to my mouse again. “That you can prove nothing.”
“It will not annoy me long. I have done enough, see.”
“How did you know? Did he tell you?”
“No, mum. He did not tell me. Although enough was said to help me onward.”
She shook her head. Somberly. Unpainted, her cheeks looked hollowed by the tomb.
“I didn’t know he hated me so much,” she sighed. “Even now.”
“Whatever did you do to him?” I asked carefully. “It is curious I am.”
“I broke his heart,” she said matter-of-factly. As if she spoke of spilling a cup of tea. She appeared to meet my eyes, but her thoughts had flown. “He was an absurdly romantic young man, you understand. Completely impractical.” She smiled with half her mouth. “He wanted me to run away with him. To South America. He was going to join some revolution or other and carve us a kingdom from the Spanish empire. That was forty years ago. No. Longer.”
She tilted her skull to the side. “Frankly, he was an ass. If an endearing one. Comical, really. He was a strong young man who imitated the weakness fashionable in Europe some years before. But his … energies … were very much of this earth.” Her smile grew, though not nicely. “He affected to like the most execrable poetry. All fairies and airiness, love beyond the grave. I found it common of him.”
Her voice warmed half a degree. “He had a blue coat and buff pantaloons made for himself, in imitation of some fool in a German novel. He was hardly à la mode. Such gestures belonged to a previous generation even then. But he was always in love with the past, you see. At least with the past as he imagined it. The trait is not unusual among the people of this city.” Her rasp hinted a sigh. “He did cut rather a figure, I grant him that. The country girls were mad for him.”
She looked away, into the relentless past. “But he was mad for me. That was his tragedy. If so elevated a word suits his situation. He loved me. But his family had fallen terribly low. I could not take his offer of marriage seriously, no matter how avidly—and repeatedly—he pressed it. I was a few years the elder and had some sense of the world. I wanted a future, Major Jones, not merely a past. You’ve seen his house? His ‘mansion’? He hasn’t made a repair in forty years. And his family did nothing for twenty years before that. It just rots away. Emblematic, I should say. He’s turned himself into a creature of ridicule, a grotesque masquerading as a Vieux Carré eccentric.”
The skirts of her dress shifted all of their own, as if an invisible weight had become insufferable. She rearranged them with a practiced hand. “But I didn’t know he still hated me so deeply. I should have thought him given more to revery. With his bent for the romantic, for the maudlin.”
“And so you married Captain Aubrey?”
“Admiral Aubrey. But no. That was later, you see. When I had grown even more realistic. I first married Eugene Charboneaux, a promising man who had read sufficient law to understand its weaknesses. He might have done great things, Major Jones. Really, he was a perfectly suitable companion. Family, some wealth, charm … and good sense. He died of smallpox while in Cartagena, pursuing a claim. You see, Major Jones, in death and business we always have looked southward. Never to the north.”
“And Admiral Aubrey?”
She waved her wounded hand. A loose end of handkerchief fluttered. “Great wealth and great age combine wonderfully in a man. His person wasn’t intolerable.”
Yes, wealth. “Why do it, then?” I asked her. “Why risk so much, when you already own such wealth? Why sell human beings back into slavery. God forgive you.”
“I shall take my chances with God. Whom I have always suspected of inattention. As for your ‘human beings’ … really, Major Jones! If cant were a capital offense, you would hang long before I might. Can you truly believe that negroes are our equal? That they are fully developed in their faculties? In their intelligence? In their feelings?” She looked askance at the follies of the world. “Of course not. You don’t believe it for an instant. You’re merely conforming to a transitory fashion.”
She rolled her eyes in a most unladylike manner. “As for their ‘abilities’ … they imitate us like monkeys, like clever apes. Pretending to feel affection. Or pain. Really, Major Jones, I’ve had dogs who felt more profoundly. Slavery is a blessing for them. It frees them of the need to fend for themselves. Which they could never do in a civilized country”
Raising an eyebrow as if raising a teacup, she continued, “As for your Miss Peabody’s ludicrous notion—advanced to her by a nigger—of sending them back to Africa, why, they’d be eaten by their fellows in a fortnight. If any blame attaches to us, it’s only that we’ve unfitted them for their native realm and spoiled them. Yet, they’ll never be more than servants to our race. Of course, the servant’s lot must be greatly preferred over the squalor of the jungle, the life among beasts.” Her aged face judged mankind. “I think them quite fortunate, all in all.”
She smiled. “As for any risk attached to my ventures … I haven’t come off so badly. Do you think? I had already determined to replace my furnishings, from Paris, now that commerce between nations has been restored to us. You’ve simply quickened my resolve.”
“You lost a ship. Today. The Anne Bullen. Burned on the river. You lost that much, at least. Even if the lives aboard meant nothing to you.”
Her smile was as cruel as a three-sided bayonet. “No such vessel has ever been on my lists.”
“But why? Why do it? When you’re already so wealthy?”
“My dear Major Jones! A man accustomed to wealth himself would never ask such a question. Wealth is the only joy that never palls.”
“Well,” I said, in sourness only half-feigned, “you have your wealth, mum. But if you try such a business in the future, you may not fare so well. Our authorities will keep an eye on you, from now on. Your every venture will be scrutinized. Twice over.”
“I should be disappointed, were it otherwise.”
I left her that way. Smug, and convinced that she had triumphed over me. That the only price she had to pay was a few broken chairs and torn draperies, some moments of shame and the loss of the household silver.
The proof, if any more were needed, that I was not fit for the work assigned me was that I understood what was to come. And I did nothing to stop it. She did not reckon how much her world had changed, that all her wealth could no longer protect her. The ranks of her world had broken, and all that remained was a series of rearguard actions against the future. I do not mean that the rich could no longer dominate, but that they had to do so by new rules. She did not see it. But I did.
Mrs. Aubrey thought only of the law, and not of justice. Like that first husband of whom she had spoken, who knew enough of the law to spy out its weaknesses. But there were parties in her city who would not rest until they had found justice. And war will cover much, as her own doings should have warned her.
Were I the man I long professed to be, I would have stopped it. I always thought that I cherished the law. And yet I walked away, convinced that the law would be broken and that justice would take its course.
Now you will say: “Who are we to determine what is just?” I know the argument. I even believe it. And yet I walked away from Mrs. Aubrey’s door that night, rejoining the merry soldiers in their wagon.
I had seen the ham, but had not spied the bottle.
They thought me a splendid fellow, for an officer. I did not reprimand them in the least, nor did I question the sacks they bore or the bulges in their pockets. That, too, was wrong of me. For an army is but a mob when it loses its discipline. I broke that rule, too, for that one night.
The news followed me back to Washington and beyond. Mrs. Aubrey was dead within two months. The negroes had been far too wise to kill her in her bed or in her own parlor. She was found with her throat slit wide and deep, in the ladies’ retiring salon of one of the grandest houses in the city.
But I have more to tell you of New Orleans.
NINETEEN
THE EXTERIOR OF MR. CHAMPLAIN’S MANSE WAS illumined as if for a ball. The torches would have done equally well to fend off the miasma of a fever year. Queer it is how joy and grief ask similar tributes of us.
I told the cab man to wait. Thankfully, he was not Irish and truculent.
The servant named Horatio announced me and Constantine guided me in. Mr. Champlain sat on his throne as usual, in the center of the room, at the eye of his world. His flesh no longer spoke of lordly appetites, but of ruin. Youth, health, vigor, all had been vanquished. I had thought him a glutton, of course, and had been wrong. What he had done to his person down the decades must have taken a discipline no less than that of the anchorite in the desert, the saint gone awry.
He grinned, as he did always. “Major Jones! Been expecting you! Come right in, cher, come on in. Take a seat. My, my, that salve does work wonders! You look fit for a nibble, keep an old man company. Sit down, sit down!”
I sat.
“Simon-Peter?” he called to yet another liveried fellow. “Where are those beignets? Bring another cup for the major’s coffee.”
I almost told him that I wished no refreshment. But it would have been a lie. Besides, I had come to suspect that I placed too much importance on easy sacrifices, such as declining a mug of coffee, instead of facing weightier concerns. And rudeness is the least useful form of selfishness.
“Yes, Major Jones, I have been expecting you. Tonight, tomorrow night … knew you’d stop by to pay your respects. And I am honored, cher, profoundly honored, that you feel at home enough to come on over all by yourself. Not that Mr. Barnaby isn’t welcome, acourse—you’re feeding him better, I hope?”
“You lied to me,” I said.
He smiled indulgently. “Now, you’re just heated up. You know that isn’t true. I won’t deny a certain amount of … of going at things roundabout. But a man takes the course he thinks best and—”
“Had you spoken to me forthrightly, many lives would have been saved.”
Constantine, the servant who seemed the chief of the lot, never flinched. Of course, that is the servant’s proper attitude. Mr. Champlain paid the fellow no regard, either. Nor did he allow the reappearance of Simon-Peter with a tray of food and drink to interdict the flow of our conversation.
“Well, now … I’d say you’re assuming a great deal, sir, a great deal. I knew some things. Didn’t know others. But I did have the sense to point you where you needed to go. I will accept that blame, cher, if blame has to fall upon my head. Don’t be shy now, have a little feed. You won’t get beignets like that the other side of Canal Street, let alone back up North. Men eat together, they can hold on to their civility that much easier. Simon-Peter, if that coffee’s not warm enough for the major, you go on down and get us up another pot.”
The servant poured, the coffee steamed. I drank.
“I was saying, Major Jones … you’ve been in this city long enough to know that nobody knows everything. Damnation, none of us even know half of what we think we do. Five men living along Villere going to give you six different answers, you ask them a simple question. Been living here all my life and I don’t know the half.”
“You used me.”
He frumped his grandly padded chin and nodded. Flesh rippled downward. “Now, that’s another thing entirely, cher. Acourse I used you. I won’t deny it. And you used me. Didn’t you? We enjoyed ourselves a transac
tion of mutual benefit. That’s the thing you have to understand about us down here … we take it for granted that life is made up of using other people. Instead of being hypocrites about it, we put some manners on it. Try to do it gracefully, if not graciously. Folks down here have realistic expectations of their fellow man. Say nothing of their fellow woman.” He grinned, with a dough-ball suspended before his mouth. “You got what you wanted. Now, didn’t you?”
Yes, I had gotten what I wanted. But I had not wanted it to be gotten so.
He barely chewed the treat, but swallowed eagerly. His breast was littered with crumbs and dusted with sugar.
He touched the corner of his mouth with a napkin. Which was not immaculate.
“That’s the thing about New Orleans, now. It’s a generous city. Give you what you want before you hardly know to ask for it. Trouble is, acourse, that many a man wants a number of things that aren’t particularly good for him. And those sorts of things are a New Orleans specialty.” He lofted another ball of dough. Indeed, they were so light they almost floated. Only the snow of sugar weighed them down. “Like these beignets here. Delicious. And bad for you in just about every way there is. But New Orleans is going to give you all of them you want. Yes, sir. Unto a surfeit, Major Jones. Unto a surfeit …”
He ate and smiled. A dab of powdery sugar adhered to his nose. “Many’s the man who leaves us sadder, but wiser.” He dusted himself with his napkin again and added, “I’d say, you should be a happy man, cher. You’re getting up from the table with all your winnings. Seems to me, our fair city’s been good to you.”
“Do you know what happened on the river today?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. See, now. I collect facts. It’s like collecting buttons. You don’t have to do a thing with ’em, you don’t want to. Facts are no bother. But too much outright knowledge makes a man uncomfortable. Simon-Peter, the major looks to me to want more coffee. And the truth is, I’m going to be cautious around you from now on. Careful as a poor relation in the visiting parlor. I didn’t take you for a fool. I’m not this old for nothing. But I will admit to misapprehending the degree of your cleverness.”