Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  Miss Dolley’s face blazed as red as her precious velvet drapes. ‘This is extortion.’

  ‘It’s a bargain. I haven’t asked a thing you can’t afford, and it’s not like you got much choice. There’s no one gonna rescue you or this country. I’m all you got.’

  All Miss Dolley had for what, I wondered. Did Mama have some way of helping Miss Dolley escape? No wonder Miss Dolley was spitting mad. The British threatened to clap her in irons. If Mama knew what was good for her, she’d stop haggling this instant. She might sew the finest stitches in all Virginia, but that wouldn’t do us a lick of good if Miss Dolley turned her out without a reference – or worse, got herself captured on account of something Mama didn’t do.

  But Mama didn’t back down. I swallowed around the lump of fear in my throat. Any second now, Miss Dolley was going to lay into her for getting uppity with her betters and spouting ideas above her station. Then we’d be on the street . . . with the British coming!

  Miss Dolley said not a word. Instead, she bared her teeth like a cornered animal. She sprang from her chair and marched over to the pretty little desk that was as much for show as for writing. The locked panel hiding her strongbox and her special White House paper went sailing into the nearest chair. The way she sharpened her pen, I thought she’d cut her finger clean off. She didn’t bother to sand the note when she was done, either. She threw it on the carpet and stormed out of the room, her chin hiked halfway to the ceiling.

  Mama didn’t retrieve the letter until the click of Miss Dolley’s heels was no more than a memory. By then the ink had dried on its own. She folded the note into a sheet of waxed wrapping paper and slipped it into her fichu. The money disappeared into the purse she wore under her skirts.

  ‘Mama, what have you done?’ Any other day I would’ve bitten my tongue clean off before I said anything so foolish. Mama didn’t take kindly to argument any more than Miss Dolley, and she had a temper like a pepper pot. But I was too scared to stop. ‘The Madisons are good folk. They don’t beat their slaves or sell families apart. They even let us go to Mass on Feast Days. But Miss Dolley won’t stand for you treating her like that. You can forget all about setting yourself up as a modiste. It won’t matter how good you are with a needle. You’ll never have a shop in Washington City now, nor anyplace Miss Dolley has friends. They’ll cut you dead. If you’re so fired up for independence, why didn’t you just wait for the British? They’re calling for the coloureds to revolt.’

  Mama rubbed her face like she was tired. ‘Have you been sparking with that Jennings boy again?’

  ‘What of it? I’ll be fourteen next birthday. Paul’s not like the other boys. He can read, and he’s a sight smarter than Mr President Madison and all the Congressmen who landed us in this mess.’

  She shook her head. ‘The British are no friends of ours. You think all those “fugitive English” they take off our ships are white? And what you think will happen to the people who rise up at their call? You think they’ll defend them when the men who own the tobacco farms, and the cotton and the mills say there won’t be any more cigars to smoke or cloth to wear without Negroes to work the fields? You think the British will put our needs ahead of their wants? They’ll leave the coloured folk behind the same way your father left me. He told me we’d live as man and wife, but as soon as the money ran low that British bastard sold me on the Charleston market. He knew I was free-born and carrying his child, but that didn’t stop him. Being pregnant only raised my price.’

  The shock of her words struck harder than a blow. Numbly I thought, what next? Mama never talked about what brought her to the Madison estate. I had some inkling she’d been a slave. Her conversation with Miss Dolley only confirmed it. But the notion that the father I’d wondered about my whole life was the person who sold us into slavery stole the breath from my lungs. The stars in the carpet started to spin.

  Mama caught me before I fell. She held me tight, rubbing circles over my back like she did when I was little. ‘Everything will be all right, Thérèse. That evil man can’t hurt us now.’ She took me by the shoulders and shook me lightly. ‘Now I need you to be strong. Pack your pillowcase with our good shifts and shoes, our church veils, my red shawl, the jar of skeeter balm under my bed, and as many stockings as will fit. Then fetch me the General from the coop. He’s the big white cock with the blue bars on his wings. Meet me in the kitchen when you’re done.’

  Her revelations had rattled me to my core, but they hadn’t made me stupid. ‘I know who the General is, and I’m not going anywhere near. He’s a fighter. He’d peck my eyes out as soon as look at me!’

  ‘Don’t let him scare you, cher,’ she crooned. ‘He won’t give you a lick of trouble. He and I have an understanding.’

  She winked. It was the most frightening thing yet. My mama had run mad.

  But the General went along with it. He squawked exactly once when I grabbed him by the legs and dropped him in the basket. Snaring him turned out to be a lot easier than saying my goodbyes. There wasn’t enough time to do it properly, and what Mama told me kept getting in the way.

  Between my grey eyes and wavy hair, it stood to reason my father was white – and no saint in the bargain. But outright wicked? If he was evil, what did that make me? I couldn’t pretend he wasn’t part of me. I saw the proof every time I passed a glass. And British? That made it worse, especially now. I wished I could pretend she was fibbing, but Mama wasn’t in the habit of lying.

  By the time I collected everything on her list, most of the household had long since departed. Even the painting of President Washington was gone, carted away by two of Miss Dolley’s gentlemen friends. After all the shouting and the banging, the quiet of the lower passage gave me goose bumps.

  The quiet didn’t trouble Mama any more than the British. My world was ending, and there she was, bustling around the kitchen, humming something under her breath as she measured out a cup of cornmeal and knotted it into a white napkin. Another knotted napkin sat in the centre of the big kitchen table next to a lantern, a cider jug, a basket, plates of salt pork and biscuits, and lots more napkins.

  As provisions went, they were all well and good. The silver bowl gleaming in the basket was another matter. So was the blue silk counterpane off Mr Madison’s bed draped over the back of Cook’s chair. On the seat rested one of Miss Dolley’s lacy linen pillowcases, plump with her things. There was no mistaking the scent of her lilac perfume. Topping the pillow was a child’s red drum. Where Mama found that I do not know, but I couldn’t imagine she had any more right to it than she had to the Madisons’ bedclothes.

  ‘They’re gonna burn the house, Thérèse,’ she chided. ‘I only took what was needful.’

  ‘Needful for what, exactly?’ French John asked from the passage.

  Stripped to his vest, he was practically indecent. His neck was bare, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He toted a pail of beer in each hand. The weight of the buckets made the muscles stand out on his arms. Arrows of sweat ran down the sides of his vest and disappeared under the sash wound around his waist. Two pistol butts protruded from the top, the one I’d seen earlier and another gun that didn’t quite match. The britches beneath the sash were tight around his thighs. All he needed was a kerchief, and you would’ve sworn he was a pirate.

  Mama’s gaze drifted down. She dragged in a slow breath, pulling on the air like the bitter scent of beer was sweeter than shortbread baking in the oven. She glanced up at him from under her lashes.

  ‘For Miss Dolley, of course.’ She reached two fingers into her fichu and offered him the folded papers.

  French John’s forehead knitted over his nose. He set down the buckets and ducked under the lintel. As he read, his frown lightened, but his puzzlement grew.

  ‘Madame Lula, I have worked for Madame President long enough to know she keeps her own counsel. However, I cannot imagine the purpose of such a . . .’ he paused, ‘assortment.’

  Mama danced closer to retrieve the n
ote. ‘Why it’s a recipe, cher.’

  Both his eyebrows pointed skyward. ‘Indeed? This is most peculiar. I distinctly recall being told, in no uncertain terms, on the very first day I came to work for the Presidents Madison, that gently born Creole ladies worked with their needle or their pen or not at all. They are far too grand for kitchen work.’

  ‘So I am,’ Mama cooed, ‘and I’m shocked and hurt that you would think otherwise. This is a different matter entirely. This is a recipe for the spirits. I’m going to work a voudou on the British they won’t forget.’

  Voudou! Mama was doing a voudou for Miss Dolley?

  If I’d still been holding the General’s basket I would’ve dropped it on the floor, and wouldn’t that have caused a fuss. Between the silver bowl, the rooster and the drum I should’ve guessed what Mama was about. She’d been stitching up good luck charms and making up remedies as far back as I remembered. But that wasn’t the same thing, not by anybody’s lights. You couldn’t fault a person for helping a body feel better, even if it was only a charm to ease their mind.

  But voudou – that was witchcraft. Just believing it was a sin. Working it was a crime against God and man.

  From the way French John gawked at her, I thought he felt the same. Then he threw back his head and laughed. ‘Bien fait! It worked in Haiti. But these English may be harder to impress than the planters of Saint-Domingue. After all, they bested Napoleon.’

  ‘I guarantee they’ll be impressed if a Frenchman adds his mite,’ Mama teased. ‘How ’bout it? Won’t you make an offering to the spirits to set things right?’

  ‘What manner of offering?’

  Upset as I was, I couldn’t help noticing how wistful Mama smiled. ‘Any trifling thing – a coloured thread, even. It’s just for luck.’

  ‘A button, perhaps? I caught one on the picture. Will that do?’ Mama nodded. He fished the button from under his sash and dropped it in her hand. ‘For luck.’

  ‘Merci.’ Mama curtsied as fine as the wife of the British ambassador – in the days when we still had a British ambassador. She pinned the button to the front of her dress.

  French John’s expression turned grave. ‘Your voudou may be strong, Madame Lula, but have a care for yourself and Thérèse. So far, the British have spared our civilians, but that could change in an instant. Even more dangerous are those who blame President Madison for our present misfortunes. They will seek a scapegoat. If they see you as part of the President’s House . . .’ He spread his hands. ‘Do you have someplace to go?’

  ‘The spirits will provide.’

  ‘Hein, perhaps they already have. Colonel Tayloe leased his house to the French Minister. The British have promised to treat it as an embassy, not to be harmed. For the rest, the minister has brought enough guards and servants to stand against a mob. You will be safe there. I will arrange it myself.’

  ‘Will you be staying there as well?’ Mama asked in a soft, wheedling voice I scarcely recognised.

  ‘Non. I go to deliver Madame President’s parrot. The minister has extended Polly an offer of diplomatic asylum.’ A smile twitched the corners of his lips. ‘For some reason he conceives her to be an important source of political intelligence.’

  ‘I wonder how he came by that notion,’ Mama said.

  French John eyed the ceiling like he was checking for cracks. ‘It could be someone said Polly repeated everything she heard.’

  ‘Someone with a soft heart?’

  ‘Someone with a soft head,’ he corrected. ‘But before I remove Polly to her new home, I must bring beer to the gate. For our soldiers. Running is a thirsty business, and losing . . . losing is worse.’

  ‘None of this is your fault,’ Mama said.

  ‘I know. But a man wants to play the hero. This time it was not to be.’ He tipped Mama a small salute. ‘Bon chance, mon amie.’

  Mama stared out the doorway long after he left.

  ‘He’s married,’ I hissed.

  ‘Where I was raised that wouldn’t have mattered,’ she murmured. ‘He could’ve had a white wife and a black, and we could’ve all been happy.’

  Out of spite I said, ‘I wouldn’t have wanted him for a father.’

  Mama only sighed.

  We hauled everything outside, past the Pennsylvania Avenue gate to the thicket of shade trees at the back of the south lawn. Between the sun beating on my head and the hot gravel of the drive burning through the soles of my shoes, I was roasting like chicken on a spit. The paths through the trees weren’t much better. It was so hot, even the little garter snakes hid in their holes. The only living things around were us and the bugs, who were buzzing fit to bust.

  I was fit to bust myself. Mama was a fine one to talk about the object of my affections. She was pining after a married man, and a white man, to boot. Nothing good could come of it. Hadn’t my father showed her that? But that was nothing compared to what she planned for the British. Voudou!

  ‘We’re going to Hell,’ I said.

  Mama shook out Mr Madison’s counterpane and spread it next to the garden wall. ‘How you figure that?’

  ‘You’re working voudou on the British and forcing me to help.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Mama pounded some garden stakes into the ground in front of the counterpane. She arranged Miss Dolley’s sheets over them in a kind of tent. ‘You bring the skeeter balm?’

  I dug the jar out of my pillowcase.

  ‘Best put some on,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a long wait ahead of us, and a lot of bugs looking for a meal.’

  She circled the trees to view our hiding place from the other side. The shade was thinner than usual after three weeks without rain. We had a good view of everything from the top floors of the Navy and War Departments on Seventeenth Street to the Treasury Department and rooming houses on Fifteenth. Of course, the view worked both ways, or it would have if Mama hadn’t rigged a shelter almost the same colour as the whitewashed garden wall. The tented sheets would do a fair job of hiding us, so long as no one looked too hard – not that I was about to give Mama the satisfaction of admitting as much.

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ I huffed as soon as she returned. ‘Voudou is witchcraft, and you know what the Bible says about that.’

  Mama scooped some ointment from the jar. ‘So is this.’

  The bitter, mint scent stung my nose. ‘No, it’s not. It’s just a mess of leaves, wax and fat ground up together. It’s the same as a script from the apothecary.’

  ‘Not when the apothecary don’t know when to pick those leaves, or why the hour matters. Not when he don’t know the prayers to say as he grinds them, or the rites to keep the medicine strong for as long as it’s needed. That’s the voudou. That’s why this ointment will protect you all night long, while the ones from the apothecary don’t last but an hour.’

  ‘Magic is a sin.’

  She snorted. ‘Then Jesus Christ must’ve been the worst sinner who ever lived. He turned water into wine, gave sight to the blind, walked on the waves and raised the dead.’

  I crossed myself in horror. ‘That’s blasphemy! Jesus Christ was the Son of God. He didn’t do magic. He worked miracles!’

  ‘Magic and miracles are the same thing, cher. It’s all the glory of God. It’s only a sin if you use it for harm.’

  ‘And how do you expect to stop the British without doing harm?’

  ‘By giving them a sign in the sky so clear they won’t need a Daniel to interpret it.’ Her eyes took on a dreamy look. ‘There’s no harm in it at all. In fact, it would help things considerably if you were praying, too.’

  ‘I won’t endanger my immortal soul by praying to heathen spirits.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you to. Aves and Pater Nosters work just fine. I know you’re carrying your rosary. No point in sinning with a lie. Now hush, I think I hear something.’

  I leaned forward, straining to listen through the bugs. A sharp crash brought our heads up. Something small sailed out of one of the upper storey windows in the P
resident’s House.

  ‘Looters,’ Mama said.

  My heart stuttered in my chest. Suddenly I couldn’t get enough air. Breathing deep or breathing fast, nothing seemed to help

  Mama squeezed my hands. ‘Easy, cher. They’re not here for us.’

  ‘You don’t know that! What if they raid the garden? What if they attack us?’ Chills raced from my fingers to the back of my neck. I yanked my hands from her grasp and tried to rub the blood back into my arms.

  Mama glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Have I ever told you how we partied in New Orleans?’

  ‘You want to talk about that now?’ I yelped, then covered my mouth with both hands.

  ‘I can’t think of a better time than when we’re on the verge of making our fortune. Now where shall I begin?’ She tapped her chin. ‘With the clothes? Or the balls? Or the night I danced with both pirates Lafitte?’

  I tried to shush her, but she paid no mind. Instead, she launched into a story about a gentleman planter who thought himself the heir to the last King of France, which reminded her of the duel his second cousin fought over a dark-skinned goddess they called the Queen of Sheba, which caused her to recollect the skirt-tossing ghost of St Louis Cemetery.

  In all my life, I’d never heard such goings-on. There seemed no end to her tales. She didn’t properly finish one before starting on another, and another, until the afternoon eased into evening, and I forgot all about being afraid. I ate my dinner, drank my cider, and tossed some seed in the General’s basket to keep him from squawking. More than keeping him quiet, I didn’t want him to interrupt.

  It was full dark when Mama finally stopped. I shook myself, confused by the sudden quiet. Where had Mama gone? Then I heard her panting softly. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought she was crying. But Mama only cried in a rage, and when she did, her bloody tears were fearful to behold.