Ran Away (Benjamin January Mysteries)

by Hambly, Barbara

  January smiled. No congregation of Africans was going to listen to a man who stood still while he preached.

  And his face had a glow to it, an inner joy that January understood. He had felt like that, those nights playing for his own people at the back of town, when the music would take hold of everyone in the room like magic, and they’d dance the moon down out of the sky.

  Rather to January’s surprise, he recognized the white preacher as the saintly-looking Reverend Doctor Emmanuel Promise, who had come so close to pulling the Reverend Dunk’s hair last night over the attentions of the Widow Redfern. He, too, beamed, with patronizing pride at his . . . Pupil?Dependant?

  ‘You’re doing quite marvelous work here, Paul, quite marvelous.’ Promise stepped in as one parishioner moved away, in front of the next woman in the line.

  Having better manners, she didn’t object. Or maybe she’d just been severely schooled that you didn’t object to whatever a white man did.

  ‘You know, it’s quite piquant to hear so moving a message delivered in – shall we say – the language of the country?’ He chuckled at his own little jest.

  The young Reverend Paul smiled too, but he looked a little embarrassed – as well he might, thought January.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ His speaking voice was soft, with the accent of New England. ‘I hope and trust you understood that no disrespect was meant—’

  ‘No, no!’ The Reverend laughed again: a tall, slender man with the refined features of an emaciated saint. ‘When St Paul taught in Athens he spoke Greek, and when he preached in Jerusalem he spoke Hebrew. You must call the straying sheep in the language they’ll understand. This is quite an impressive congregation you have for these Tuesday meetings, and when the new church arises, you can be sure they will have a place there.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The young man wiped his face with a spotless handkerchief – any other African in Louisiana would have had a bandanna. The light, long bone-structure of a Fulani was overlaid with at least two crossings with whites. The expression of eager naivety made him look very young, and even without it, January guessed, he wouldn’t put the pastor’s age above twenty-five.

  When the Reverend Promise moved off, and the last four or five of the congregation had shaken hands and thanked the young preacher, January at last moved forward. ‘Excuse me, Reverend – are you the Reverend P.B.? I’m here about the pears.’

  The Reverend turned, with a different sort of brightness in those speaking brown eyes. ‘Then you must be Mr January.’ He held out his hand: soft, though the grip was strong. A scholar’s hand.

  He’d never cut cane in his life.

  ‘Welcome. Thank you – and welcome. Paul Bannon. And you’ll be Willie?’ He turned to January’s companion.

  ‘Sir.’ Willie shook hands, with a confidence January had not seen in him before, his uncertainty wiped away by strength and quiet pride. ‘Thank you, sir. What you said up there – I never heard the gospel preached, sir. Marse Den back home didn’t hold with it, an’ new Marse – Marse Gosse – lived too far from any town.’

  ‘I’m glad I spoke words that helped you. And I’m sorry,’ added Bannon, with a quick smile, ‘that you won’t be staying on to come again. You’re going to be traveling with a family named Thomas. I’ll take you to the wharf as soon as I lock up here. Mr January, I hope we’ll meet again.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Ben—’ Willie shook January’s hand. ‘Thank you. I won’t forget this. Not ever.’

  ‘We hold these meetings here every Tuesday night Mr January,’ continued Bannon, ‘if you’d care to join us. I won’t ask if you’ve found the Lord,’ he added a little shyly, ‘because just you coming here, as you have, tells me that you have.’

  ‘He found me,’ said January.

  ‘That’s the thing about God,’ said Bannon. ‘He has all the time there is, so He’s willing to look for as long as it takes. Anybody here going back to the French town?’ he asked, turning to the last of the worshipers as they filed out the door. ‘Excellent . . . Jerry, Matt, Mariah. You won’t mind walking with Mr January? You all mind how you go.’

  NINETEEN

  It wasn’t until January and the man Jerry had bid the other two goodnight, and crossed through the Place des Armes with the Cathedral clock striking curfew, that January realized that his companion was, in fact, the slave of M’sieu Pavot. Jerry had mentioned his mother being sold earlier in the year, but it was only when he said, ‘I got a little extra time, if I don’t get seen by the Watch. My master’s in Baton Rouge—’ that January said, with a start:

  ‘You’re Pavot’s Jerry, then!’

  Jerry grinned sidelong. ‘You musta heard all the row-de-dow Sunday.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said January at once. ‘That was stupid of me—’

  ‘No, no.’ The young man shook his head. ‘If the house had caught fire, you’da heard my name the same way.’

  ‘You think he actually did it?’ January inflected his voice like a stranger agog for sensation, not that of a man seeking information.

  ‘Mr Breche from the apothecary saw him.’ The account was clearly good enough for him.

  ‘Was you in the front of the house when they fell?’

  ‘I was in the kitchen in the back. I’d checked the whole front of the house just before sunset, like always when Mr Pavot’s away. But he’s been gone most of the week, an’ it’s cold in that house! In the kitchen at least it’s warm.’

  And somehow less lonely, thought January, recalling how Willie would risk his freedom – and the well-being of every one of his benefactors, though that thought had clearly never occurred to him – to emerge from beneath the safety of the house and sit in the kitchen, only for the pleasure of hearing other peoples’ voices, of knowing he wasn’t alone.

  They crossed Rue St-Philippe, January following the young servant along Rue Bourbon with the air of a man fascinated by the inside story of great events.

  ‘Wasn’t ’til someone came ringin’ on the doorbell, shoutin’ about the murders, that I knew anything had happened. I came out, an’ there was everybody on the street crowdin’ around already, an’ Mr Breche kneelin’ beside the bodies, weepin’ an’—’

  Jerry froze in his tracks as a man’s voice ahead of them shouted, ‘Heathen whore-bitch!’ and there was a dull thunk, of something thrown against shutters.

  January thought: Shit.

  A single oil-lantern hung on its crossed chains above the intersection ahead. In the isolated pool of its yellowish glow, five or six men and two women were visible, clustered in the street in front of Hüseyin Pasha’s house. Dim needles of gold marked the shut jalousies of a second-floor window, and the reflected gleam slithered on the bottle one of the women held in her hand. A man threw another bottle at the passageway door. It splintered.

  ‘You hear me, you goddam devil-worshipping murderer?’ yelled one of the men. He staggered, cupped his hands around his bearded mouth. ‘You suckin’ the mayor’s arse, to keep out of jail where you goddam belong?’

  ‘Damn it,’ whispered January through his teeth, ‘Hüseyin is in jail.’

  ‘Really?’ Jerry sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Didn’t say nothing about it in the paper.’

  ‘That’s because the paper is written by a conceited clown who loves to get people stirred up.’

  Jerry looked startled. ‘They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true, would they?’

  One of the women pulled up her skirts, half-squatted, and pissed on the threshold of the door, to howls of laughter from her companions: ‘That’s showin’ him, Ginny!’

  The man who’d thrown the bottle took something from his belt, and both January and Jerry retreated into the inky shelter of the doorway of Philippe Breche’s shuttered-up pharmacy. A shot cracked out in the misty night, accompanied by the splintering crash of the window glass behind the shutters. January thought of Jamilla, lying in her bedroom upstairs. Of the three maids and the eunuch Ghulaam, and of the other s
ervants whom white men could probably shoot without anyone inquiring who’d done it . . .

  Wondered if Oliver Breche, in his room above the shop, could hear these first fruits of his craving for revenge.

  And of course, reflected January bitterly, the City Guard was nowhere to be found.

  He was just about to duck out of the sheltering doorway and head for the Cabildo when a woman appeared from around the corner of Rue des Ursulines. She walked calmly and alone, a basket in one hand, as if all the night were hers to do with as she pleased. By that alone, January reflected, he or anyone in the French town would recognize her, even before she came near enough the feeble street-lamp for its glow to outline the seven points of her tignon: a thorned halo around her head, a crown of flame.

  Jerry whispered in shock, ‘Holy shit, that ain’t . . . ?!’

  January nodded. All the voodoo queens wore their headscarves tied into five points. Only one wore seven.

  The woman ignored the drunken whore as if she weren’t there, stopped before the passageway door. Something in her demeanor silenced the men – one of them approached her and began to speak, but she only looked at him, and he stepped back.

  She took a piece of chalk from her basket and began to draw on the door.

  Fear as well as belligerence tinged the drunk woman’s voice. ‘What you drawin’?’

  ‘I’m drawin’ death.’ The deep alto was utterly matter-of-fact.

  The drunk woman and the men looked at one another and did not reply.

  Jerry whispered, ‘Is that Marie LeVeau?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  The other whore was sang melée, Indian features as well as African mixed with white; she said nothing, but backed away. The others were white, and Americans, but knew hoodoo when they saw it. Whether or not they believed in its power, January could see that none of them was willing to go up and touch those signs.

  One of the men finally asked, ‘You puttin’ a curse on the house?’

  LeVeau turned. In the shifting shadows of that single lantern over the street, her dark eyes seemed fathomless, inhuman as a snake’s. ‘What do you think?’ Then she turned back.

  She marked the door, then the shutters of each window in turn: crosses and hearts, circles and stars, the curving track of the Damballah Serpent. Black chalk and salt, gunpowder and rum – the smell of them drifted faint on the heavy air. The strong, sudden sharpness of blood as she drew something small that squirmed from her basket and cut its throat.

  The Americans drew further back.

  January recognized the signs of Maitre Carrefour – an aspect of the master of the crossroad, Papa Legba; of Ogun and the Baron Samedei; and of the dreadful Marinette of the Dry Arms. LeVeau sang soft and guttural in her throat as she worked. So silent had the rowdies fallen that January could hear clearly, African words blending with French.

  The Americans left, pretending that they did so of their own accord. Their feet tapped wetly on the brick banquette. They didn’t start speaking, all the way back down Rue des Ursulines. Foggy silence closed in.

  ‘You want to come inside?’ whispered Jerry when they’d gone, and he nodded across the street toward the Pavot house. Marie LeVeau had gone around the corner on to Rue des Ursulines, to mark the carriage gate, the stable door.

  ‘I’ll head home. Last folks I want to meet now is the Watch.’

  ‘You take care, then.’ And, as if he feared to be seen by LeVeau as he crossed the street, Jerry darted over the way at a run. January watched him as he unlocked the little passway that led to Pavot’s rear courtyard; heard clearly the clank of the key turned again, the snick of the bolts.

  Only then did he come out of the black niche of Breche’s doorway and cross the street. He knew Mamzelle Marie – his sister Olympe was her pupil and friend. And he was a good Christian and knew that God’s strength was greater than those crosses and triangles in black chalk and graveyard dust . . .

  He might even have been brought to touch them, if someone had offered him money to do so. His family needed the money.

  But it would have to be a great deal of money, he reflected. And good Christian or not, he’d go visit Olympe afterwards, to have the cross taken off him, just in case.

  Mamzelle Marie came around the corner again with her little basket as he neared the door.

  With her, a little like the skeletal Baron Cemetery himself in his too-large frock-coat and much-battered chimney-pot hat, was Hannibal Sefton.

  ‘I earnestly hope you have money to pay this lady, amicus meus.’ The fiddler coughed, one hand pressed to his side. ‘I promised her two dollars, and an extra fifty cents for the inconvenience of coming out at this hour on short notice – amicus certus in re incerta cernitur. And in truth, I haven’t a dime.’

  ‘You’re paying her? To do this?’

  ‘It got rid of them,’ said Hannibal reasonably, ‘didn’t it?’

  Wordlessly, January dug in his pocket. He had a dollar fifty. ‘Can I give you the rest tomorrow?’

  Mamzelle Marie smiled like the Serpent in the Garden. ‘I trust you, Ben. It’s not that I don’t know where you live.’ From her basket she took another flask and emptied some of its contents into her hand. In the street light January could see it was reddish: brick dust. The color of life. She knelt and began to mark crosses, small and almost invisible, at the bottom corners of the vèvès she had drawn.

  Cynics throughout New Orleans were wont to say that Mamzelle Marie made half her money taking curses off the houses that she’d been paid to put curses on. They didn’t often say this to her face – and they generally didn’t say this after it got dark.

  ‘When I came by your house,’ said Hannibal, ‘with that Aeschylus translation Rose is working on for M’sieu Landreaux at the bookstore, Rose was kind enough to offer me supper. She asked me: would I walk past this house on my way home, to make sure all was quiet?’

  Hannibal generally scrounged quarters in the attics or store sheds of the bordellos and saloons in the Swamp – the violent and filthy district out beyond the edge of town that had grown up around the turning basin of the Carondelet Canal – and earned food money by playing for such of the customers as were sober enough to appreciate it. He had lately augmented this income by forging free-papers for runaways, and by doing a little gambling, but steadfastly refused January’s offers of attic room in his own house: Who’s going to send their daughters to Rose’s school, if word gets around I sleep under your roof? Between them, Rose, January, and January’s sister Dominique at least made sure he didn’t starve.

  He went on, ‘I came around the corner and found Pig-Nose Dick and Waddy Page and their friends assembled, and rather than attempt reasoning with them, I thought perhaps if they thought the house sufficiently ill-wished without further effort of theirs, they might go away. It is a cold night. It would perhaps have been cheaper if I’d asked them to accompany me back to a saloon, but I suspect Soapy Jansen had turned them out—’

  ‘I didn’t think any saloon keeper in this city would turn anyone out.’

  ‘You’ve never seen Pig-Nose in his cups. I’d have gone to your sister, but she’s clear on the other side of the French Town—’

  Lantern light shone suddenly around Hüseyin Pasha’s door, which opened a crack. The tutor Suleiman’s face appeared.

  ‘It’s all right,’ called out January quickly. ‘They’re gone, and this –’ he gestured to the marks that covered the shutters – ‘might actually serve to keep others away for a time.’

  ‘Please,’ said the tutor. ‘Come upstairs, if you will, sir. And you, Lady—’ He bowed to the voodoo queen.

  Marie LeVeau made a final mark on the inside of the door and shook her head. ‘This naughty man –’ she flicked Hannibal’s shoulder with the back of her reddened fingernails – ‘called me from my bed, with tales of injustice done to the innocent. And indeed,’ she added, ‘the Grand Zombi whispers to me that your master is innocent of that which they say he has done. Else I would not h
ave come.’

  Her dark eyes moved, seemed to pierce the deepening fog. ‘What I have marked, not all will draw away from. But for a time at least, I think they will cross over to the other side of the street and leave you be.’ From her basket she took a bandanna and wiped the brick dust from her fingers. ‘Still I say to you, and to your Lady, sir, that it is best that you leave this house. Evil has been done here. Only Evil will come if you remain.’

  ‘I think she’s right,’ said January, when the voodooienne had melted into blackness and he and Hannibal had followed Suleiman back along the passageway to the loggia. ‘I’m amazed men like your friend Pig-Nose would even be able to read newspapers . . .’

  ‘Don’t underrate them because they smell like privies. Even in an outhouse you’ll find a newspaper. And it only takes one literate drunkard with a grievance against the rich to stir up a whole tavern – or the whole of a street.’

  Suleiman opened the door to the upstairs parlor, where a branch of candles burned on the marble-topped table. Movement further down the gallery caught January’s eye, and in the shadows he saw a boy standing, a blanket wrapped over a pale nightshirt . . .

  Suleiman saw him, too. January didn’t understand the words he called out, but his voice was reassuring: Everything’s all right. Go back to bed. It will be better in the morning . . .

  The child vanished.

  Hüseyin’s child. Shamira’s child.

  ‘Thank you.’ Jamilla rose from her chair as they entered the parlor, where the smell of fresh coffee lay thick on the lamplit air. ‘You are kind.’

  Hannibal bowed deeply. ‘We were lucky, my Lady,’ he said. ‘Ignavus fortuna adiuvat. Lucky that those Gallatin Street slush-buckets believed in Madame LeVeau’s magic – at least in the dark and the fog they do – and luckier still that Madame believed my assertion of your innocence. Nevertheless—’