Just then he was hit by a cloud of smoke. Surprisingly, it smelled like his mother’s rose perfume, like the leather bound books in his seminary library, like the orange trees wafting up to him on his flights over Jerusalem.
“Come in,” he said.
Thrusting his pelvis forward, grinding his hips, the old man duck-walked across the cottage. He threw down his tools and bundle and sprawled in a chair, his bony knees spread wide. “Remember me?” he asked in the harsh metallic voice of someone whispering through an iron pipe.
“No,” said Father Antoine, who often heard that question from people he met on the street. “I’m afraid not. Do you belong to the parish?”
“I don’t belong to the human race.” The old man giggled.
Father Antoine sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Which one are you—Beelzebub? Moloch? As-modeus?”
“Naah,” he whinnied. “I don’t run with that pack.”
“But if you’re not a demon ... are you the devil himself?”
“Good guess,” said the old man. “Try again.”
Father Antoine sighed once more, a deeper and more desolate breath. “Forgive me,” he said. “I should have known. But I thought you’d look different. Somehow I expected ... a skeleton in dark armor on a black stallion.”
“He does his business in his part of the world. I work New Orleans and the Caribbean. I’m Baron Cemetery.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Father Antoine.”
“I know that,” said the baron.
There was a silence. “You’ve come to take me with you?” Father Antoine asked softly.
The old man nodded vigorously; the dark glasses bounced on his nose.
“I’m not scared,” said Father Antoine, then felt his quick heartbeat. “Only... I’d be grateful if you’d give me a few moments to say the last rites.” Instantly his heart grew quiet.
“Sorry,” the old man said with such finality that Father Antoine’s heart started pounding again. “It’s late and my whistle’s kind of dry, and frankly I can’t stand hearing those prayers again. You know how many times a day I’ve got to listen?”
“Just one short prayer,” pleaded Father Antoine.
After a while, the old man bared his toothless gums. “I’ll let you say a little prayer,” he agreed. “I’ll let you say grace.”
“Grace?”
“Grace. I got a little snack with me.” He pointed to the black-wrapped bundle. “I’d be honored for you to share it. And I’d like you to say grace before we eat. I never had my supper blessed by such a big man in the Catholic Church.”
“Thank you,” said the priest. “But I’m not hungry. Lately I’ve hardly been eating. I’ve lost my taste for food. Besides, it’s so late ...”
“Damn right it’s late. But that’s your choice. A grace and a meal. Or we can leave right away, and I’ll eat when I get home.”
“All right,” said Father Antoine, thinking that even a grace was better than no prayer at all. “I’d be pleased to share your dinner.”
The old man slapped his thigh and jumped up, grinding his cigar out on the floor. He spread the black cloth on the table and laid out the food. Bowing like a headwaiter at an elegant restaurant, he lit a red candle stuck in an empty wine bottle.
His manners were lost on Father Antoine, who wasn’t even watching. He was busy making plans. He’d just pretend to eat. Actually he’d be saying the last rites under his breath while his guest was distracted by the meal ...
The old man poked him and clasped his bony black hands at his breast. Father Antoine did likewise. “Thank You O Lord,” he began, “for the fruits of Thy earth. Thank You for Thy goodness and Thy generosity even in our last hours.”
Then Father Antoine opened his eyes and saw the fruits of God’s earth. The table was spread with platters of crispy fried chicken, heavy round breads, buttered yams, bowls of fresh com relish and cucumber salad, cream cheese, pitchers of milk, bottles of wine, beer, whiskey.
“It’s a picnic,” said the old man. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you,” said Father Antoine, completely forgetting about the last rites. “I believe I will.”
Father Antoine helped himself. He savored the crusty chicken on his tongue, licked the butter off his fingers, smeared hunks of bread with globs of creamy cheese, sampled a little of everything on the table. “I haven’t eaten like this for forty years,” he thought. “Maybe I never have.” He and the old man ate happily, until Father Antoine noticed that the salty chicken was making him thirsty.
“Have a hit of whiskey,” said the old man as if he’d read his mind. “That’s what it’s for.”
“I couldn’t.” Father Antoine smiled and shook his head. “After all ...”
“Sure you could. You deserve a drink. Even convicts get a last drink. Come on. It’s good Texas whiskey.”
“Just a taste,” said Father Antoine, raising the bottle to his lips and swallowing.
It was then that Father Antoine’s spirit flew back to that warm breeze it had been riding over Palestine with the Archangel Gabriel. Now it followed the current downward into the window of a poor dining room in Jerusalem.
Father Antoine found himself sitting directly opposite Jesus at the table of the Last Supper. Gazing at the Lord’s beautiful face, he took a deep, contented breath.
Just as he was wondering if the Lord and His disciples noticed him, Jesus answered his unspoken question by reaching across the table and tapping him ever so lightly on the shoulder.
At ten o’clock on the morning of Father Antoine’s funeral, an explosion rocked New Orleans. Madmen babbled in the streets. Old invalid ladies asked their maids if the British were still fighting in the harbor.
“That was seventeen years ago, ma’am,” said the maids, pale and puffy-eyed, dressed in black. “No, that’s the honor guard firing off cannons. Father Antoine’s funeral is starting, may he rest in peace.” Crossing themselves, the maids prayed that the news would make their mistresses suffer mild seizures requiring quick trips to Brown’s Pharmacy, so they could stop in the Place D’Armes for the social event of the season.
Everyone was there. St. Louis Cathedral was packed with invited guests. No one knew who’d issued the invitations, but a hundred soldiers made sure no one was admitted without one. Facing the guards were the reporters, pushing and scribbling. Behind the reporters, celebrity hounds gaped at the visiting dignitaries, memorizing every detail so they could spend six months discussing the bishop’s carbuncles and the governor’s wife’s earrings. Behind the celebrity hounds were the common folk who’d loved Father Antoine as their priest and mourned him like a father.
At the back of the square were the ones who knew the secret: Bad magic in the air.
It wasn’t exactly a secret. The story came from a black woman named Old Venus, Delphine’s former cook, who’d gone on to work in the kitchen at the Ursuline convent. In the seventy-two hours between Father Antoine’s death and his funeral, none of the nuns had been hungry. So Old Venus had spent her three-day vacation holding forth to small audiences on the cathedral steps.
“It was a Tuesday night,” she’d say, always with a slight frown, as if remembering for the first time. “I was just washing the last dishes when Brother Julian ran in, all wild-eyed and breathless, saying Father Antoine was dead and they needed someone to clean his cottage.
“I was glad to do it. Father Antoine was always nice to me, giving me spare change from the collection box for my chewing tobacco. Once, when I was scared I’d never save enough, he told me he’d pay for my burial himself. So I was happy to give him one last good housecleaning.
“His door was wide open. That’s how they found him so quick—someone saw the door swinging in the breeze. I shook the rain off myself and walked in.
“Now, I’d seen plenty of corpses. Out in the country, somebody was always dying. But when I walked in that cottage, shivers ran down me. I screamed and ran straight out.
“ ‘J
ust like a nigger,’ said the cop who’d just come on the scene. ‘Scared of ha’nts, is it?’
“I let him think what he liked. I wasn’t about to tell him what I saw ...” Here Old Venus always paused to build up suspense, waiting for a listener to prod her, “What’d you see?”
“I saw that somebody’d fixed that poor man,” said Old Venus, clamping her lips together like a snapping turtle. “It was a strong death fix right out on his table like I’d seen in the country a hundred times. A red candle stuck in a bottle. A sharp knife. A whiskey bottle full of cigar ashes. And a bunch of chicken bones arranged in a cross.
“I don’t know who fixed him, but I do know they called down some powers which weren’t human. ’Cause no human could’ve licked a set of bones so clean—smooth as the finest old ivory.”
On the night Marie was released from Parish Prison, she dreamed she walked into her kitchen to find the Last Supper in progress at her table.
Surrounded by disciples, Jesus sat in the center of the bench. Opposite Him sat Father Antoine and an angel with golden wings. Standing in the doorway, Marie watched them laughing, feasting on roast chicken and wine. Then she saw Jesus lean across the table to fill Father Antoine’s goblet. Suddenly she knew he shouldn’t drink it.
She tried to cry out and was awoken by her own scream, awoken with the familiar soreness around her eyes and the certainty that something was wrong.
She dressed quickly and ran out into the rain. As she turned into St. Anthony’s Alley, she saw a small crowd gathered before the priest’s door. Halfway down the block she was almost knocked over by Old Venus, shrieking as she ran from the scene.
“I won’t clean that house,” cried Venus. “I wouldn’t go in there if it was Jesus’ throne room.”
Brushing past her, Marie approached a policeman. “You need some cleaning done?” she asked.
“I think that’s what the brothers want,” he said.
Too numbed by the tragedy to wonder why a well-dressed young woman was volunteering her services at one in the morning, the monks looked at Marie and saw nothing stranger than a yellow girl willing to do some cleaning. Nor did they think it peculiar when she refused the dollar they offered, nor even when she entered the cottage and slammed the door behind her, explaining that the draft made it hard to dust.
Marie pressed her back against the door. Spotting the bones and candles on the table, she shut her eyes to hold back the tears. She recognized the special fix Doctor John had taught her. But who’d put it on Father Antoine? Not even Doctor John had reason to fix him, unless ...
“Later,” she told herself. First there were important things to do. She searched the cottage for clocks to stop, mirrors to turn toward the wall. But Father Antoine had no mirrors or clocks. So she got a broom from the comer and swept the well-swept floor. The sweeping calmed her enough to approach the straw mattress on which the monks had laid out the corpse.
Father Antoine seemed to be resting peacefully, with a slightly bemused smile. In the soft light of the white tapers, his wrinkled face and silver beard emitted a pearly aura like a saint’s halo. But the skin already drawn back over his teeth and nostrils gave him an unsettling resemblance to an ape.
“Good-bye, Father,” whispered Marie, pushing the irreverence from her mind. “When you get to heaven, ask Him why He sent the snake, why He let His son be crucified. I still want to know.”
Then, kneeling to kiss her godfather’s dry cheek, Marie noticed the faint scent of whiskey, a fine dust of chicken crumbs at the comers of his mouth. “Why?” she cried, straightening up to keep herself from shaking the corpse’s frail shoulders. “Why?”
She took a small object from her bodice, unwrapped the black velvet and removed the tiny pocket mirror she kept buried beneath a cross marked in the dirt of her courtyard. Prying open Father Antoine’s hand, she placed the mirror in his palm and curled his stiff fingers over to hold it in place.
“Now tell me.” She trained her gaze on the dead man’s closed eyes. “Tell me who did it.” She raised the cold hand and held it up to the candlelight. “Tell me!” she cried.
The mirror grew cloudy. Then an image came into focus.
Looking into the mirror, Marie saw Doctor John’s smiling face.
She rewrapped the mirror and put it back inside her dress. Lifting the comers of the black tablecloth, she tied the bones and bottles into a bundle and carried it out of Father Antoine’s house.
CHAPTER XXII
“WHY DID YOU DO IT?”
“Do what?”
“Get me arrested.”
“I didn’t get you arrested. I don’t work like that.”
Marie and Doctor John were shouting but there was no one around to hear. Lepers’ Row was deserted. Sweet Medicine had taken the other wives and children to Father Antoine’s funeral. Even the lepers had gotten a military escort to pay their respects.
“Why did you fix Father Antoine?”
“I didn’t fix him. He was old. It was time for him to die.”
“I can prove it.”
“You can’t prove a goddamn thing. A yellow hairdresser’s word ain’t worth a goddamn thing.”
“Then what’s this?” Marie threw open her bundle. Chicken bones flew through the air. Bottles rolled across the floor.
“That looks like Baron Cemetery’s table scraps.”
“I know that. How’d they get into Father Antoine’s cottage?”
Pulling off his glasses, Doctor John looked honestly surprised. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “Maybe the good father was doing a little hoodoo on the side.”
“No. You fixed him. You called Baron Cemetery down. I saw your face in the mirror.”
Doctor John put on his spectacles. “The baron goes where he pleases,” he said. “And you see what you want in that mirror.”
“Tell me why you did it.” Marie narrowed her eyes, focusing on Doctor John’s spectacles. “Or I’ll ruin you. I swear it. I’ll use everything you taught me. I’ll turn those fixes back on you and put you out of business.”
“That’s what you’re doing already,” Doctor John said slowly. “And that’s why I used my power on Father Antoine.” He looked up, his face contorted with fury. “Since you want the truth, Miss Marie, it was all for your benefit. That priest was an example for you. His time had come anyhow and I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into. Just a little warning to keep away from my business before it’s too late.”
“Then you admit fixing Father Antoine?”
“No. I said I didn’t fix him and I didn’t. I used my power—but it wasn’t fix power. It was secret power. I had something on him just like I got something on everyone—even you, Miss Marie Laveau.”
They stared at each other for a long time. “What was it?” asked Marie, breaking first.
Doctor John laughed bitterly. “Now, isn’t that just like you, always wanting to know everything and never giving anything back? What’ll you give me if I tell you? Will you lay off my business?”
“I’ll give up my customers,” said Marie, so curious she meant every word. “Just tell me.”
“I don’t believe you. But I’ll tell you anyhow ’cause I want you to know. Ever hear of the Templars?”
“No.”
“They’re an order. Like the Masons, bu^a military order. They started as a protection gang for pilgrims going to the Holy Land, then branched out, hiring themselves out as a mercenary army for kings who needed some fighting done. They got rich that way—and so powerful that even the Church got nervous and the Inquisition took off after them.”
“What’s this got to do with Father Antoine?”
“Lots,” said Doctor John, pausing to savor Marie's impatience. “Now. You remember hearing about that little trip Father Antoine took back to Spain, those five years in the hills nobody ever knew about?” Marie nodded.
“What happened?”
“Father Antoine went crazy.” Leaning back in his chair, Doctor John lit a fresh cig
ar. “It happens all the time—seminary boys go crazy right and left. Mostly the weeds are pulled in school—Jesus fixes the ones He doesn’t want. But Father Antoine didn’t get fixed till after he came to Louisiana.
“He had delusions. He thought he was God’s personal bar of lye soap—like the angel with the flaming sword. He stayed up nights figuring ways to root out secret heathens and went even crazier when the governor wouldn’t let him test his fancy schemes.
“Back in Spain he started his own private Inquisition. The Church wasn’t mean enough for him so he worked on his own like a private detective, like a bloodhound. In one year he found twenty packs of convert Jews wailing at hidden altars, two households of Moors creeping downstairs to pray against their eastern basement walls, a Russian family with Byzantine ideas, a band of gypsies selling phony holy relics and an Englishman staging black masses in his Bilbao retreat. Father Antoine turned them into the authorities and went off after bigger game.
“The last of the Spanish Knights Templar were rumored to be living in the northern hills. By then the order had come down a peg, attracting the nastiest bullies from the fanciest military schools, who came home from the wars to find they’d liked it better in the army. So they rode off again, met up with their old buddies &nd started living in caves, drunker and dirtier than any Kentucky ruffians.
“They were small-time bandits—stickups on the Barcelona road. And none of this rob-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor for them—they spent their loot on sherry and whores. They were so small—except for an occasional vigilante squad, no one went after them, not even the Church.
“Father Antoine did. He found them on directions from a local madman. Nearing their cave, he decided to infiltrate and convert them—no one would help him round them up.
“The first part was simple. He told the knights he was a defrocked monk—they believed it. But then things got stickier.
“One morning, about a year after he’d joined the Templars, Father Antoine woke up in bed with a fifteen-year-old whore and realized he liked it there. He liked the life, the freedom—just like I bet he liked the fried chicken and whiskey Baron Cemetery served him. He began outdoing himself, setting records for drinking, romancing, taking the biggest risks in the holdups.”
Marie Laveau Page 20