‘Yes,’ Rose agreed. ‘This house is too small.’
Nearly every dwelling in New Orleans – with the exception of the old Spanish houses like January’s, and the town houses of the rich – was built exactly alike: four rooms, two cabinets, and a half-story loft. You walked straight into your host or hostess’s bedroom from the street and were ushered into the parlor; if man and wife owned the cottage, the man’s bedroom would be closer to the river, the woman’s farther, even if only by feet. These rules were as immutable as the ones about who walked through which doors.
But there were also houses in New Orleans that were essentially half-cottages. One room on the street, one room in the back, and the loft. Your kitchen, at the other end of the backyard, would be barely a shed, and there was no building to house servants because if you were living in a half-cottage you couldn’t afford servants.
You probably couldn’t afford to feed the two small children playing with toy bricks on the doorstep, either, much less the older girl – she must have been seven – scrubbing the step with brick dust, or the older girl yet – twelve? thirteen? – who emerged from the single dormer above the front door, lustily singing a hymn, to shake out bedding and lay it over the window sill to air.
‘It doesn’t mean Bannon wasn’t in on it,’ pointed out Hannibal quietly. ‘And it doesn’t mean that he won’t inform the police of your involvement with the slave runners, if he thinks it will protect him or his master.’
January opened his mouth to say, ‘I’ll take that chance,’ and closed it again.
The chance was not his to take.
‘If it was Bannon who – um – proverbially stuffed the silver cup into Benjamin’s luggage,’ said Rose, ‘as Joseph in the Bible did to pay back his obnoxious brothers, he would have known that he had a far better accusation to make, and one that would actually stick.’
‘But one that would backfire on to him,’ said January. ‘I think you’re right. The accusation came from Promise, and Promise probably hasn’t the slightest idea of what Bannon is up to with helping fugitives. Myself, I think it’s worth trying . . .’
‘So do I.’ Rose put her arm through Hannibal’s. ‘If things go wrong I will claim to be Hannibal’s mistress and say that I’ve never seen you before in my life.’
‘Why do I feel like this is an opera and I’m your valet, Benjamin?’ inquired the fiddler as they crossed to the door.
The little girl sprang up from scrubbing the step as they approached. Contrary to tales January had heard, there was no ‘secret sign’ written on the house – as there was none on his own – to alert slaves that this was a way station. Yet he wondered, looking up at the bedding in the dormer window, whether in the twilight a quilt might be hung out, on nights when ‘company’ was expected, even as Rose would put a quilt out over the rail of the gallery to mark the house.
In so tiny a house, the children had to know.
‘Is your Papa home?’
The little girl nodded. The tiny boy abandoned his bricks and toddled through the single French window that was door and window and all things else, for the front of the house couldn’t have measured nine feet, and called out, ‘Papa!’
A woman emerged an instant later – Rose’s age, neat as wax, smiling welcome – and beckoned them into the tiny parlor. Before she could even finish the sentence, ‘Please come in . . .’ or January could introduce himself and his companions, Paul Bannon emerged from the bedroom, tugging down the dress of the baby he held.
Concern sprang into his face at the sight of January, and he handed the infant to his wife – ‘You, sir, are a hero,’ she said, and kissed him.
‘Mr January. Dearest—’ He turned to Mrs Bannon, who gathered up the toddler and disappeared at once into the bedroom and so, presumably, through to the yard. ‘Is all well?’ he asked at once, and his glance went from Rose to Hannibal.
January said, very quietly, ‘I don’t know. It depends on what you can tell us about the concubines of Hüseyin Pasha, and what you were doing on the night they escaped.’
Paul Bannon closed his eyes for a moment; his breath went out of him in a sigh. He asked quietly, ‘How did you learn?’
‘Never mind that now,’ said January. ‘Did you arrange it?’
Bannon nodded, a slight movement. Pain creased his face. ‘And I wish I’d had both hands cut off,’ he said, ‘before I’d done it. I don’t think he would have harmed them if they’d stayed in his house.’
‘You think Hüseyin Pasha killed them?’ January tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice, but by the way Bannon looked at him he could tell he hadn’t succeeded.
‘Who else would have?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.
Rose said, ‘Tell us what happened.’
Bannon brought her a chair. It was chilly in the house, but no fire burned in the little fireplace. Fuel was clearly something to be conserved for nightfall. There was a settee in the parlor, and a crippled-looking footstool. Hannibal solved the seating conundrum by perching one flank on the corner of the sturdy table that took up a good deal of the center of the room. January settled himself at one end of the settee; the preacher at the other.
Bannon folded his slender hands. ‘I know you’re acquainted with Jerry Gosling,’ he said after a moment. ‘Mr Pavot’s man. Do you also know Sillery Hodge, who works at the livery behind Pavot’s? He’s hard,’ he went on, when January nodded, ‘but his heart is good. It’s been difficult for me to learn, the depths to which this curse of slavery rots the souls of even the best-hearted of men. Before I left Boston I hadn’t the slightest concept what it does – what men do, and become, as a result of knowing that at any moment everything could be taken away from them. I dare say—’ He looked up and met January’s eyes with shyness in his own. ‘I dare say you could give me lessons in the subject.’
‘I dare say I could.’
‘Well.’ He sighed again. ‘Sillery. He’s been a member of my flock since I’ve been here in New Orleans. When the owner of the livery is away – as he often is – he’ll open the gates after the curfew hour, so that we can use the carriage house for meetings. It’s useful, because he also has the key to the Pavot yard, so our congregation can slip through from two directions and draw less attention to ourselves. But in the daytime, he was renting out the carriage house for other purposes . . .’
‘To Miss Noura,’ said January quietly. ‘So that she could meet her lover.’
‘Exactly. I was conferring with Sillery one day when she came in, to wait for Mr Breche. Her French was very halting, but I had studied a little Arabic in seminary. Please don’t think too harshly of her, Mr January. She was only a young girl and had been raised to know no better. She said that her fellow concubine, Karida, had been a Christian and now felt herself in danger of God’s displeasure for renouncing her faith. The next time Noura slipped out, she brought Karida with her. Karida and I talked in the stables, while Noura trysted with her beloved in the carriage house. That afternoon Karida returned to the arms of Jesus Christ.’
‘And was that when she decided to escape?’
Bannon nodded. ‘I made arrangements with the Reverend Promise,’ he said. ‘His house is large enough, and he only has the one servant woman and the groom, so Karida could hide there in safety while she learned English. Dr Promise said that he would seek out a respectable family to take her in. He knows many extremely prominent families here in town, and there are many who will do whatever he asks of them, in the Lord’s name.’
Including accuse me of theft and assault on a white man, reflected January, and plant evidence in my house to make the story stick . . .
‘Did you know they planned to rob their master?’
A flush crept along the minister’s cheekbones. Even if both his parents had been deemed ‘Africans’ in Boston, he probably had two white grandfathers and probably all his great-grandfathers were white. What had they thought of their son, January wondered, those quadroon parents whose parents before them ha
d somehow managed to get to Boston, to make enough money to give their children a decent living? What had they said to him, when he’d told them: God has called me to go to the South, to preach His word to the souls there whose names God has forgotten?
‘Dr Promise said that there was no shame in “despoiling the Egyptians”, as the Israelites did when God led them to freedom.’ Bannon’s voice halted over the words. ‘I didn’t agree. But he pointed out that it would be far easier for him to find a family willing to take in Karida if she wasn’t penniless, particularly in these times. And even if she hadn’t taken some of the Turk’s gold, I suspect Noura would have done so.’ He sounded like even speaking that truth about the dead girl troubled him.
‘I can’t imagine old Philippe Breche would otherwise have countenanced a match between his son and a Muslim girl who barely spoke French.’ Hannibal folded his hands on one bony knee. ‘Thou ever young, fresh, lov’d and delicate wooer, whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow that lies in Dian’s lap! Thou visible god . . . It certainly explains why Breche was sitting up in agony for Noura on Sunday night.’
‘Yes,’ said January. ‘Sunday night. You helped the girls escape on Friday—?’
‘Sillery went up the ladder to the kitchen roof and helped them down with their luggage. It was the dead of night, and Valentine was away—’
‘Did you already know you were going to be holding services in the carriage house on the Sunday?’
The minister shook his head. ‘We were going to meet in a barn on the old Allard plantation, but Dr Promise warned me at the last minute that that barn had been put back into use. Now, at harvest time, it’s hard to find places to meet. The sugar houses and cotton warehouses are all in use, even in these times. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sorry to be meeting at Valentine’s. I hoped – and I know it was foolish of me – that somehow the girls would change their minds, would decide again to take the chance and flee . . .’
‘Change their minds?’
‘This was after they’d gone back,’ said Bannon. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not telling this very well—’
‘Gone back?’ January repeated. ‘Gone back to Hüseyin Pasha?’
‘Yes.’ Guilt and distress again darkened his eyes. ‘Dr Promise said only that they’d changed their minds – that they were foolish girls and longed to return to the luxury of sin. But I know Karida was never happy with the thought of stealing from her master. The Friday night, the night of their escape, when Sillery loaded their bags into the wagon to take them to Dr Promise’s house, she said to me: It is wrong. And though I understood why it had to be, I could not disagree with her.’
He pressed his fist to his lips. Outside the door, his children laughed at something and a puppy barked: the sounds of play, of joy.
‘I should have spoken then. In the daylight – sitting here now – I can tell you a score of places in the Bible where God clearly states that it is perfectly acceptable, even righteous, for His children to plunder the goods of unbelievers, if by doing so they will save themselves. But since that moment when I came around the corner on to Bourbon Street and saw those poor girls dead on the pavement, every night it comes back to me that I should have spoken. They returned to their master of their own free will. Would it have made a difference to his wrath, if they had not compounded their escape with robbery? Even though they returned his gold as well . . .’
‘How do you know this?’ asked January. ‘You say the girls went back – and returned the gold. How do you know?’
‘He told me,’ said Bannon simply. ‘The Reverend Promise.’
They walked back along the levee, the swiftest route to the Cabildo. ‘It should be simple enough to confirm,’ remarked Hannibal as they wove their way among packing crates and drays, pipes of French wine and boxes of English tools, scissors, hats. Downstream of town the cane fields were being burned after harvest; the smoke dyed the air yellow, gritted in the eyes. ‘His Holiness can’t have disposed of the gold because it would implicate him immediately. There aren’t lashings of Turkish lira in circulation.’
‘Which would be why he had to put Hüseyin out of the way,’ added January grimly. ‘So long as Hüseyin Pasha is in New Orleans – or probably anywhere in Louisiana – the Reverend Promise can’t spend the gold. He can’t say: The Turk gave it to me, so long as the Turk is there to tell his side of the story. And I don’t suppose he would trust any man with the secret, if he hired someone to help him melt it down.’
He glanced sidelong at the young preacher walking beside him. Bannon’s face kept a wooden expression, but the tautness of his mouth, the bleak bitter gaze that seemed to stare through the stacked cotton-bales, the small gangs of Russian and British and Spanish sailors, were almost painful to look upon. Apart from whatever trust Paul Bannon had placed in Emmanuel Promise as a man and a man of God, January felt himself reminded that if Promise were arrested, Bannon would lose the white church that sponsored his ministry.
He would become just one more black man trained for a position that the custom of the country would not let him fill: rather like January himself.
But it was Bannon who said, in a small voice, ‘Did he ever mean to use that money to build a church at all?’
It was the first thing January had thought of. Hannibal and Rose as well, he would have bet money. But neither of them reacted with the exclamations of good-natured sarcasm that either would have employed had they been alone.
This was a new discovery for Bannon.
January said gently, ‘I suspect not.’
Bannon took a deep breath, then let it out, as if with it he expelled his dreams.
Kindly, Rose said, ‘We won’t know until his place is searched.’
‘How he could—’ Bannon began, but broke off as January froze in his tracks. ‘What is it?’
What is it? January turned the question over in his mind, wondering what to reply.
He hadn’t seen the man’s face in ten years. And it was only a glimpse, on the deck of the handsome little brig that stood at the wharf. The man was turning away, hidden in a moment by the crimson flags of the Sultanate of Constantinople. A stevedore jostled January, and he stepped aside as if in a dream. Was it unreasonable that a man who had been in the employ of one of the Sultan’s former favorites would later in life go on to work for the consul in Havana? Particularly if he had experience of the West?
Two more men crowded past him. The brig was loading: barrels of water, of ship’s biscuit, of salt beef. Men shouted from the deck to stir a stump you lazy bastards . . .
The man January had glimpsed returned to the rail, and this time he was sure of it.
It was the scar-faced groom with the gold earring, whom he had last seen ten years ago in the wine cellar of the house of Sabid.
TWENTY-SIX
‘Ben?’ said Rose.
He drew a deep breath, with a sense of enormous and terrible clarity.
The one thought in his mind was: And what are you going to do?
He had met Hüseyin Pasha on only a handful of occasions in his life. The woman whose life the Turk had saved was dead. The fact that the brig – he saw the name Najm painted on her bow, and beside it what was probably the same in Arabic – was taking on water meant they were sailing within the hour.
He had only to turn his head away and say: Sorry. I thought I saw someone I knew, but I was wrong . . .
Ayasha had risked her life for a young girl who was alone and a slave, for the sake of her own memories of slavery and helplessness.
And the man who had let his mortal enemy go free into the world had been given back into the hand of that enemy, by those who said: He must be guilty because he is a Turk. Because his skin is dusky and he does not worship as we do.
January took another breath. I have a wife and a son, he said in his heart, to the man who had handed him that letter in that cellar in Paris . . .
Or to that man’s wife, and that man’s son.
God damn it . . .
‘I don’t think the man who claims to be the Sultan’s representative from Havana is telling the truth,’ he said.
The other three only looked at him, not yet aware of what this meant.
‘Hannibal—’ He was surprised at how calm his own voice sounded. ‘Find Shaw at the Cabildo. Tell him to have the credentials of the Sultan’s representative checked. I have good reason to think they’re forged. The man who claims to have been sent by the consul in Havana is a man named Sabid al-Muzaffar, a personal enemy of Hüseyin Pasha’s, who means to cut Hüseyin’s throat and drop him overboard as soon as they’re clear of New Orleans. Tell Shaw what the Reverend Bannon said: that he should search Promise’s house as soon as he can, but that first he has to prevent Hüseyin Pasha from being taken on to that ship. All right? Rose—’
He stripped off his jacket as he spoke, followed by the cravat that he usually wore as a way of marking himself as different from the rough-dressed workers on the docks. ‘Find Natchez Jim. You know where he usually puts in, just below the market? Tell him I’m going aboard the Najm, in case Shaw isn’t at the Cabildo. Tell him to follow the Najm when she puts out, follow close enough that they don’t dare drop a body overboard. I’m going to try to free Hüseyin and go overboard with him. We’ll need Jim to pick us up.’
‘I’ll go with Rose,’ said Bannon. ‘Jim – he’s the owner of the Black Goose, isn’t he? – may need a couple more men, and I can probably find some on the dock who’ll go if I ask them—’
‘Another Centurion,’ mused Hannibal. ‘I say to one Go, and he goeth . . .’
‘And I say to you go—’
‘And I goeth.’ The fiddler fished in the pocket of his old-fashioned cutaway coat and brought out a thin roll of tattered silk, which he placed in January’s hand. ‘I won these off Slippery Jovellanos at faro last week. You remember how to use them?’
Through the silk, like a little bundle of bones, January could feel the skeletal shapes of a set of picklocks. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’
‘I trust you’ve made your will,’ said Rose as Hannibal vanished among the sailors, drays, and cotton bales.
Ran Away (Benjamin January Mysteries) Page 27