“What did they say about it?” asked Olympe, sewing a pinafore for Chouchou in a blazing halo of work-candles by the parlor fire. Lenten quiet blanketed Rue Douane, and a hard chill; Mardi Gras had fallen early that year, and now in March there was still the possibility of frost. Marguerite, who had continued to rent the rear bedroom during her convalescence, would take ship in the morning for Paris—Gabriel and Olympe between them had cooked a special dinner, and afterward Hannibal had played his fiddle, which Cochon Gardinier had retrieved from the theater when everyone started yelling Fire. The children were in bed. It would soon be time to go.
“That they were sorry.” January’s voice had a dry twist. “But Cavallo said that as a daughter of la patria, d’Isola would understand.” He had visited the jail that afternoon, after John Davis’s trial and acquittal: his general impression in the courtroom, which had been packed with Davis’s friends, had been that the jury was overwhelmed by the tangle of conflicting tales of Austrian spies, slave-smugglers, mysterious veiled ladies, nameless hired bravos, Italian politics, and enraged divas to bring in any kind of verdict against a man so universally liked. Prosecutor Greenaway had done his best, but with Tillich’s testimony discredited, the case had simply collapsed.
“The man has been in too many operas.” Rose’s spectacle-lenses flashed gold as she looked up from the hearth where she sat. “Did he really think she wouldn’t mind dying, in innocence, for the cause of a united Italy?”
“I don’t think he thought much about it at all,” said Marguerite. “One doesn’t when one’s obsession is with higher things. It was enough for Tiberio to say, I shall make sure she gets out. Cavallo was absolved. He had done all he could, and he really did need to get on with his own crusade. He could weep about it when he learned the Awful Truth in Act Four, of course. One saw a good deal of that,” she added, “in the Revolution.”
The ballet mistress had been visited that afternoon by an extremely discreet lawyer, who had taken her deposition regarding her two assaults by Big Lou, had insisted on reimbursing her for her fare back to Paris, and had assured her that she would not be further troubled by representatives of the Vienna regime. “I have no idea who the man was working for,” she had remarked over supper. “The name on his card was Dutch. He seemed quite pleased that the connection of Big Lou to Chevalier through Marsan was so clearly established, so there must be trouble in it for the Hapsburgs somewhere.” She had sounded pleased.
“If Cavallo and Ponte hadn’t fallen under suspicion through their contacts with the Carbonari,” said Rose now, “would you still have had to spend the night out in Bayou des Familles?”
“Oh, yes,” said January. “I think La d’Isola started looking for a locally knowledgeable witness to establish her alibi the moment she realized her hired bullies had attacked the wrong man. It wouldn’t take many inquiries to ascertain that La Cornouiller was deserted, and it was the work of an afternoon to go out and fit the place with new padlocks and hasps. She needed someone who would believe her story of being kidnapped by slave-stealers; having decided to extend the alibi to include her friends, it was, of course, no accident that she ‘encountered’ them on her way.
“What she didn’t count on,” he added, “was us getting out from under the house, which she’d cleaned out pretty thoroughly of anything that could be used as a tool. She didn’t count on us ending up at Marsan’s—and speaking to people who remembered the murder of Sidonie Lalage in any detail—and she couldn’t have predicted that I’d have the occasion to learn that most Europeans don’t have the slightest idea what a pea-nut is, much less that they’re a favorite delicacy of rats.”
“White people don’t know rats love pea-nuts?” demanded Zizi-Marie, startled.
Then Marguerite asked, “What’s a pea-nut?”
“So I knew that it wasn’t a European behind the threat against d’Isola. And once I started thinking in terms of what grievance would be held by a person of color, I was pretty certain—in spite of all the evidence to the contrary—that it was Marsan who was the original target, not Belaggio at all.”
“She was good,” said Olympe softly.
Marguerite sniffed. “You obviously never heard her sing.”
“Perhaps not,” said Hannibal. “But we all saw her act. Marsan most of all, I expect—which must have taken the proverbial nerves of steel, to seduce a man whom you not only intend to kill, but who you know is capable of killing you in a jealous rage. Trifles light as air / are to the jealous confirmations strong / as proofs of holy writ. . . . As she had more cause than most to know. My God, that would have taken courage.”
Looking across at his sister’s calm profile in the candle-light, January wondered suddenly if Olympe had guessed. Had realized that the Italian girl was, in fact, what the slave-dealers called a musterfino—the child of an octoroon and a white, with features fine as a Spaniard’s, as old Faon had said. And from that had guessed the rest.
Or did the slight half-smile on her lips mean something else?
“Could she have stabbed Marsan,” asked Rose reasonably, “without getting blood all over the dressing-room? Whenever I attempt to cook a chicken, the kitchen ends up looking like the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. And she’d have been caught, surely, the first time someone went up that secret stair. You said it was all splashed with blood, even though Cavallo and Ponte must have just shoved their would-be doubles in through the door at the bottom. You and Hannibal had been up it only a week or so before.”
“You gotta take lessons in seduction, girl,” remarked Olympe, glancing up from her needlework. “With the whole evening to prepare, and just one or two candles burnin’, you think Marsan’s gonna notice a couple extra sheets on the floor?”
“Particularly,” added Madame Scie wryly, “if La d’Isola were in a sufficiently advanced state of undress at the time.”
“Since the stair led down from her room,” added January, “Marsan’s blood wouldn’t have been discovered until after she was gone. Possibly long after, if she made sure the stair was locked at both ends and she lost the key. The sheets themselves would have ended up in the river; there was blood smudged on the lining of her satchel where she carried them. I’m guessing she sent Marsan a note, arranging a meeting in her dressing-room Thursday night—maybe even telling him she wouldn’t be at rehearsal, or telling him not to go. The Gower boys having failed her, she wasn’t about to trust hirelings again. And she had the knife they’d left in the alley.”
There was a little silence, while the log hissed softly between the iron dogs.
“What was her name?” asked Marguerite at last. “Her real name, I mean.”
“Marie,” said January. “Like every other girl in New Orleans. Marie-Drusille Couvent. God knows what she intends to do with her life now.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know that herself,” said Olympe softly. “Some people can fight to the death as warriors, but then they can’t let the war be won. When there’s a chance at peace, they get edgy. They pick fights with everyone around ’em, and finally go look for another war. In a lot of ways, war is easier than loving, and learning to live day to day.”
“Maybe that explains Marsan,” said Paul, who up until this time had not spoken.
And maybe, thought January, it explained Othello as well.
He and Rose parted from Hannibal where Rue Douane crossed Rue Chartres, Hannibal turning his steps toward the City Hotel. Consuela was leaving the day after tomorrow, bound for Mexico City, where an Easter opera season was being readied for the grandees who made up a little court around the flamboyant dictator Santa Anna. John Davis, with whom January had spoken briefly after the trial that afternoon, had plans for another tour of the North—Philadelphia, New York, Boston—but looking at that haggard face, the exhaustion in his eyes, January wondered whether the little man would ever fully recover from his month in the cells of the Cabildo.
But at least he was free. He had clasped January’s hand in thanks before his w
hite Creole friends and well-wishers had crowded around him. January had known when to step away.
Rose’s hand slipped quietly into his. After a moment, the streets being deserted, he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned a little into him, like a wild bird settling, hesitantly, onto a human hand.
Walking back, late, from seeing Rose to Rue des Victoires, January passed the levee, and saw gold-threaded in the torchlight of the wharves not only the clumsy stacks of the steamboats, but the masts of the tall clippers, the squatter funnels of the ocean-going packets that would take Marguerite back to her home. Such were the turns of fate—especially given the fact that he himself was forty-two now, and she fifty-seven—that there was a chance he would never see her again.
But he would know she was there, he thought. Alive in that gray-walled city, with its twisting cobblestone streets and pewter river, instructing her bright-haired little rats at the Odéon, or shopping in Les Halles with its reek of fish and wet pavement when the chestnut trees along the boulevards put out their leaves. For two years now he’d walked the muddy brick banquettes of this pastel town beside the vast brown Mississippi flood, and had nearly forgotten Paris, and what it was like to be close to the heartbeat of something beyond sugar cane and money.
Hannibal was right, he thought. There was a miasma here that made you forget.
It was good to remember again.
Another thought came to him, and instead of turning up Rue des Ursulines when he came to it, he went two more streets to Rue Du Maine. For three days now, cold winds had flowed down over the town as if vengeful northern gods were trying to punish the gentler world for its Mardi Gras excess; January’s breath smoked as he passed beneath the iron lamps, burning on their crossed chains above the crossed streets. But he could tell this was the last of the winter. By next week the city would blaze with azaleas.
The pink cottage on Rue Du Maine was quiet. Through gauzy curtains he saw a woman sitting alone in the bedroom, coiffed and jeweled, and immaculately dressed.
Waiting, as Desdemona had waited. As all women wait who give their lives over into the hands of men. Women who hope against their better knowledge and judgment that things will change, and be all right.
He knocked gently at the French door and saw the woman startle. “It’s me, Minou. Ben.” She gathered her cashmere shawl from the chair, hurried to open the door.
“I can’t stay,” he said, meaning, You don’t have to worry about me lingering, in case Henri arrives.
“It’s all right.” Her smile was tired. In the Place d’Armes, the Cathedral clock spoke eleven.
He asked, “Are you all right?”
“Do you mean, have I made up my mind?” Her hand stroked her belly as her velvet eyes playfully mocked. He lifted his hand in a fencer’s gesture, acknowledging a hit. “Or is it already too late?”
“You tell me.”
The mockery melted to a genuine smile of grateful friendship, of warmth at being understood. “I have a note for you.” She went back and fetched it from the dressing-table where her open book lay. “Your friend Shaw brought it here, not knowing where to find you. I said you’d probably be by. To check on me, if nothing else.”
I was in the court today, it said without salutation, without date or address or any kind of identification, but he knew the hand. He had last seen it on a note informing him that the writer was on her way out to Cornouiller Plantation on Bayou des Familles.
I don’t think you saw me, though I was within a few feet of you. It is surprising what a tignon and a beaten look can accomplish. As I have reason to know.
I wanted you to know that if they had convicted Mr. Davis of the crime, I would have spoken. I would rather get away free, as Vincent Marsan did for my brother’s murder, but not if another had to take my place on the scaffold. I’m not sorry for what I did, nor would you blame me, if you knew the life I endured, after Aucassin’s death. Mlle. Jocelyn will have hardship, and I’m sorry to do that to her, and to her mother, for they are blameless. As I was.
You were good to me. More faithful even than Silvio and Bruno. You came back into the burning theater to help me, who was a stranger to you, and whom you already knew to have done murder. I try to remember things like that, when Marsan’s face comes to me in dreams—or Silvio’s. I thank you.
Maybe one day I will have the freedom to be that kind of friend.
January folded the note and tucked it into the pocket of his coat. Unsigned, and written in French—a language she would deny she wrote.
War is easier than loving. Did Marie-Drusille Couvent have the courage to live in peace?
He looked up at his sister on the doorsill above him, arms folded beneath the blue-and-ruby gorgeousness of her shawl. “Thank you,” he said. And then, “Don’t let one of your friends tell you that it isn’t too late. If you change your mind about what you’ve decided, speak to me—and only to me.”
“I won’t change my mind.” Her breath was a cloud of diamond in the soft gold light from the room behind her. “I love him, and he loves me.”
Do you believe that makes any difference?
Instead, he said, “Go to bed. He isn’t coming.”
“I will.” But after she closed the door, she left the heavy curtains open, so that the light would fall welcoming through. He saw her go back to her dressing-table again, and pick up her book.
My mother hath a maid called Barbary, Desdemona says to Emilia as she prepares herself for the coming of her lord. She was in love, and he she lov’d prov’d mad, and did forsake her. . . .
Like Desdemona’s willow song, the music would not leave January’s mind as he walked back down Rue Du Maine. Sidonie Lalage had waited, he thought. And Drusilla d’Isola. There were more ways than the violence of passion, for love to wound; more ways than one, to die upon a kiss.
From the corner of Rue Dauphine he glanced behind him, and saw the gold light of Dominique’s window still lying on the wet pavement, keeping faith with Henri in the raw blackness of the night.
OPERA IN NEW ORLEANS
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera held a position in popular entertainment almost equivalent to motion pictures today. There were wonderful operas, there were bad operas, and there were god-awful silly operas, and in the early nineteenth century New Orleans had probably the most active opera and opera following in the United States.
John Davis—to whose shade I extend my sincerest apologies for making him a suspect (although by all accounts he probably would have been tickled: he seems to have been that kind of man)—not only produced operas of close to European standards, but took his company on successful tours of the northern cities for several years running. There actually were “opera wars” of the kind I’ve described once James Caldwell opened a rival opera house on Camp Street, including putting on competing productions of the same opera in the same season. The original American Theater did not burn down as I’ve described in the book, though its successor did. In fact, incendiary destruction seems to have been the fate of most theaters in that era of gas lighting and nonexistent safety laws.
All the operas mentioned in the text, with the exception of Incantobelli’s Othello, actually existed, although it’s difficult to find recordings of some of them. The 1830s were years of transition, from Classic Opera into full-blown Grand Opera, with elaborate sets and over-the-top special effects. In this period neither Verdi nor Puccini had written yet, and many of their predecessors— like Auber and Meyerbeer—are far less well known today. (I looked very hard for a video of the ghosts of the mad dancing nuns.)
German opera was only just beginning to come into its own, and only one piece—Weber’s Der Freischütz— seems to have been popular in New Orleans.
Prior to Verdi’s 1887 rendition of Shakespeare’s Othello, there was at least one other opera of the play, by Rossini in 1816. (The tragic ending was rewritten because audiences in Rome found it too much of a downer.) (Rossini wasn’t the first composer to put
Beaumarchais’s play The Barber of Seville into operatic form, for that matter.) It was not unknown for producers to insert other music or popular songs into operas, or to tinker with the texts—in Italy it was not uncommon for the performance to be discontinued after the death-throes of the star, since nobody really wanted to see the rest of the piece anyway. I have done my best to give a sense of what opera must have been like at this era: grandiose, overblown, politically hot, sometimes silly but enormous fun.
Since blocked toe-shoes did not come into use until the 1840s, ballerinas really did do pointe-work supported by wires. Apparently some of the most famous actually worked on pointe without wires, with nothing more than lambswool stuffing and extra stitching on the toes of their shoes. They must have stayed on full pointe for relatively short periods of time, and must have had astonishingly strong feet.
Mostly, the object of the opera ballet was to provide a leg-show to the young bucks in the audience, many of whom had girlfriends in the corps: the dancers seem to have been a lot closer to Broadway chorus ponies than to the artists of today.
No plan of the original American Theater exists. I have based my reconstruction of the building on contemporary descriptions of it, and on the plans of other theaters in existence at the time. Likewise, I have tried to reconstruct pre-electric—and pre-Argand—stage lighting and effects as well as I could, from such histories as are available.
As always, I have tried to tell a story to the best of my ability, without doing violence to what I’ve been able to find out about a time, a place, and attitudes very different from our own.
If you enjoyed Barbara Hambly’s
DIE UPON A KISS
you won’t want to miss any
of the superb mysteries in the
Benjamin January series.
Look for
SOLD DOWN THE RIVER
and
GRAVEYARD DUST
at your favorite bookseller’s.
Die Upon a Kiss Page 41