‘And Foxford told him what he knew?’
‘That I was being blackmailed, yes.’
‘So after Gerry left to see you,’ said January softly, ‘Derryhick went out to find Blessinghurst. He ran him to earth in a gambling parlor on Rue Orleans, spoke to him . . . and returned in haste and rage to the hotel where they were staying and had a violent quarrel with . . . someone. Someone who stabbed him, hid his body, and then took steps to make sure that, if the body were found, it would look as if the murder took place in Foxford’s room. Swapped the sheets on Foxford’s bed for new sheets unused, and put the worn ones on his own. Got rid of the bloodied rug in his own room and replaced it with the rug from Gerry’s room – and, for good measure, threw his victim’s blood-smeared watch under Gerry’s bed.’
Rablé said quietly, ‘A clever villain.’
‘Clever and careful,’ replied January. He glanced at Isobel, who sat rigid, taking this information in, sorting it and seeing its implications.
‘And Gerry?’
‘He is in the Cabildo,’ said January. ‘Because of the watch, and the fact that he was Derryhick’s heir for a great deal of money – and because he will not say where he was. He said he would have his business manager purchase Pierrette . . .’
‘To hell with M’sieu le Vicomte,’ snapped Louis. ‘Where’s Blessinghurst? That Irish bitch I’m paying at the Countess’s says he hasn’t been in there in a week.’
Sybilla. The Countess would snatch her bald-headed . . .
‘You can’t kill him!’ cried Isobel. ‘Don’t you understand, Louis? Whoever is behind this, whoever it is who doesn’t want Gerry to marry me – is it the uncle he spoke of, M’sieu? The evil one? – Gerry is still in danger. If you kill Blessinghurst—’
‘When I kill Blessinghurst,’ returned Louis, ‘he will keep his fat mouth shut, and that is all that concerns me. And you, M’sieu—’ He turned savagely upon January, and Cadmus Rablé said in his quiet voice:
‘M’sieu Janvier is going to return to New Orleans in perfect safety on the next steamboat, Louis. And he will remain safe. Or you will find out that there are other ways for families to be ruined. Is that understood?’
The young man stared at the old, eyes blazing, like a splendid high-couraged stallion – and about as intelligent as the average stallion, January reflected: a beautiful beast who would run himself to death in terror of flowers flickering in the wind, without asking why. But in time Louis moved his head a little, and the tension in his body changed to something else. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly. ‘Now you understand something, M’sieu Rablé.’
He stabbed his finger at January. ‘If one word, one breath, of this leaks to the world, about my cousin or about my family, there will be many people to suffer. But I swear to you on my father’s heart, the first one will be him. And the next, his wife, and every other member of his family. And from that, M’sieu Rablé –’ he turned to his host with a stiff, furious bow – ‘I will not be put aside by you, or anyone.’
Turning, he stalked from the house.
They heard hooves hammer away in the direction of the levee; die into the thrumming of the cicadas in the trees.
‘Well, now,’ said Cadmus Rablé. ‘Janvier, let’s talk about what can actually be done.’
TWENTY-FOUR
True to the strict codes of conduct that governed the relationships between the light-complected libre planters and men of darker hue and questionable social provenance, January was given an excellent dinner on the kitchen’s wide gallery, where the table was laid in summer for the house servants. January was able to steer the talk to Mamzelle Isobel and her mother without trouble, and it became clear immediately, from the talk around the table, that there wasn’t the slightest suspicion anywhere in Natchitoches Parish that Isobel Deschamps was anything but the granddaughter of old M’am Noisette’s white half-sister. ‘And like true sisters they were, M’sieu,’ the housekeeper assured January. ‘They’d escaped from Sainte Domingue together, you know, at the revolution there in ’91, and their poor Papa killed and M’am Noisette’s mama, too.’
The sisters must have arranged things between themselves, January reflected, as soon as Noisette knew herself to be with child.
The older of the maids – a slow-moving and rather fragile woman in her fifties – handed January a bowl of greens and said, ‘M’am Celestine – Mamzelle Isobel’s mama – practically grew up here, with Michie Robert and Mamzelle Toucoutou and all Michie Rablé’s other children. And a good thing, too, for Beaux Herbes was a sorry house in those days, and a lonely one. M’am Eliane would come here in the mornings with her little girl – how she doted on that little girl! – and not leave till dark was falling, as if this was her true home, with M’am Noisette. I felt bad for her,’ she added sadly, ‘for M’am Eliane had such fire in her, when first she wed.’
‘It was losing her babies,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Poor unformed little things, not even able to live, except the boy. And once Michie Louis-Florizel got religion like he did, he kept that boy to himself.’
‘Easier to blame his wife, that he shot his own brother,’ said the butler quietly, ‘than admit it was him that pulled the trigger.’
After supper, when January walked back across the yard in the cooling twilight, he paused to listen to the stillness, the deep silence of the countryside, that for seven nights now he had heard chiefly as the background to imagined sounds of pursuit. Three and a half decades ago, this land of marshes and bayous that lay between the two arms of what had been, at various times, the Red River – the Old River, the Cane River, the Red’s current stream – must have been a backwater indeed, and this sense of being alone on the planet a thousand times worse. For a woman used to the friends and activity of New Orleans, to be left by her husband there would have truly been exile.
‘Granmere told Maman what she’d done, when she lay dying,’ admitted Isobel, as she poured out coffee for herself, January, and Rablé on the big house gallery, after the servants had lit the mosquito smudges and departed. ‘How Granmere Noisette had hidden her condition and went to bear the baby at Beaux Herbes. Then when Granmere Noisette died, Maman told me. I think now it would probably have been better if she hadn’t,’ she added, a small frown pulling at her brows.
‘I’d have ridden over and put my hand over her mouth for her, if I’d known,’ put in Rablé. But for his African features, he could have been any well-off cotton planter in the state. At the servants’ table, January had learned that though Cadmus Rablé treated his hands well, he and his numerous progeny regarded the more African-blooded men and women they bought from neighbors or from the dealers in New Orleans as simply that: hands. You had to have slaves to run a place, and so you got them and treated them as everyone else did.
‘Forgive my asking, Mamzelle,’ said January, ‘but were you shocked?’
Isobel nodded. The transformation of lively prettiness into true beauty appeared to extend below the skin: true and terrible sacrifice had made her thoughtful.‘I was shocked, yes. But you know how it is in New Orleans, M’sieu – and here even more. One sees ladies in church, with their hair done up in tignons, and that’s the only way you know that they’re not French. And all my life I’ve grown up seeing girls – Dupres and Metoyers and Rachals, and even Granpere Rablé’s granddaughters – his other granddaughters, I mean,’ she added, with a slight flush – ‘wearing gowns just as pretty as mine, and riding in carriages, and looking not one whit different from myself and Marie-Amalie and our Verron cousins, and being told, “Oh, no, you can’t go to the same parties with them, they’re gens du couleur . . .” And they looked exactly the same as us. Louis—’
She hesitated as she spoke her cousin’s name. Then she went on, ‘Sometimes – often! – they do go to Paris or London or Italy, and we hear that they’ve married some man in Europe, and Maman and my Verron aunts whisper about how they’d be willing to bet their best pearls that those gentlemen never knew . . . And what harm w
as in it?’
What harm indeed? January reflected. Even the ladies like the Countess Mazzini got more respect in the eyes of white men in their guise as Italian whores than they would have if they had the name of black ones.
The girl concluded simply, ‘But I couldn’t not tell M’sieu le Vicomte. I couldn’t begin – what I hoped we were beginning – with a lie. Not a lie about that.’
Rablé sniffed, as if to say, ‘What he don’t know won’t hurt him nor anyone else,’ but January nodded and said, ‘In my opinion, you did rightly, Mamzelle.’
‘I am only sorry I did so in a letter, for that . . . that swine Blessinghurst to steal, and not face to face, as my heart first told me I ought.’ She blinked quickly and rubbed her eyes, as if at smoke. ‘May I come to New Orleans with you? To see him – to tell him . . .’
January shook his head. ‘It’s out of the question,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure Pierrette is purchased by Foxford and sent on here. But if, as I suspect, Foxford’s Uncle Diogenes is behind this effort to keep Foxford from marrying, your appearance will do nothing but trigger the disaster that Foxford is willing for your sake to go to the scaffold to prevent.’
She bit her lip and looked aside. ‘There isn’t – they really do not have so much of a case against him . . . Do they, M’sieu?’
‘I fear that they do, Mamzelle.’ He saw the tears spring to her eyes again, glimmering in the smoky light of the cressets. ‘Did Foxford ever speak of his uncle?’
‘Often,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘He never – he always found some reason to explain or mitigate his conduct. Gerry – M’sieu le Vicomte – has no belief in the evil of men. But the things his cousin Theo would tell me—’
‘Theo was in Paris with Foxford? Uncle Diogenes’s son?’
‘Oh, yes. That’s who Gerry was staying with. Theo’s mother – Grace, Lady Diogenes Stuart – lives in the family town house in Paris because she refuses to go to India with her husband, or – or to live under his roof at all. Theo was drunk most of the time – or under the influence of opiates, Gerry told me – and would do and say the most outrageous things. I remember once, at a ball at the St-Glaives’s, he hid in the conservatory, seized me around the waist, and said to me, “There’s tainted blood in the family, my dear. You’d do well to think twice about passing it on to your sons.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep, because there are so many here in America, who would say – like Louis – that I have tainted blood.’
‘What did he say about his father?’
The girl’s face flushed, even to the tips of her ears, and she looked steadily out into the darkness for a time and shook her head. After a moment she replied in a stifled voice, ‘Things no man should ever say about his own father, even if they are true. And things no man should say to a woman.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mamzelle,’ said January. ‘I didn’t mean about what Diogenes Stuart does in his – idle hours. That much I know. But did Theo say anything about what his father thought of Derryhick? Or of his cousin Foxford, for that matter?’
‘Well, one couldn’t really trust anything Theo said, you know.’ Isobel looked back at him, her lips quirked in a sad little smile. ‘Gerry – M’sieu le Vicomte – would say there was a period of about four hours, between eleven and three, when he could be relied on, sometimes . . .’ She shook her head again, and her mouth tightened suddenly, as if the memory of a double-handful of winter afternoons, sitting in Tante Cassandre’s parlor or riding in the park, with nothing to look forward to but happiness, had suddenly stirred to life, lacerating her inside. As she had before, Isobel took a deep breath and let it out, as if regaining her balance to go on.
‘Theo said his father hated M’sieu Derryhick, on account of some aunt leaving all her money to M’sieu Derryhick instead of to the family. And sometimes he spoke of his father hating the whole family, when Madame le Vicomtesse would not agree to send him money. But Gerry said that, in fact, his uncle was too lazy to care one way or the other and hadn’t been in Ireland for years. His outrage was . . . theoretical, I believe was the word Gerry used. “Uncle Diogenes is forever in a tumult over something,” he said to me, after Theo had hinted at dark plots on the part of his father. “He looks to blame Aunt Elodie and Patrick and Mother and me, whenever he has to write old Droudge for an advance on his quarter’s allowance, or for hush money to some pander, instead of blaming Great-Grandfather’s mistresses or Grandfather’s stock speculations or his own infernal laziness.” It was the same, he said, with his Uncle’s anger over Theo’s gambling-debts and . . . and drunken sprees with women. “He is angry at Patrick,” Gerry said, “because it is easier to be angry at another man than to actually come home and act the father himself.”’
Rablé raised his eyebrows a little at that, and January said, ‘It sounds like he is a wise young man, for his years.’
She half-smiled again at a memory. ‘I think that was M’sieu Derryhick,’ she said. ‘For a man who was always laughing, he had great wisdom about humankind. Gerry said he was going to get Theo to write his father a letter complaining that I was a milk-and-water Miss without a word to say for myself. That that would be the quickest way to obtain his permission to our match.’
‘Permission?’ Rablé tilted his head. ‘The boy is of age, surely?’
‘Not until he turns thirty.’ Isobel shook her head, her smooth forehead puckering. ‘Or weds, with his trustees’ consent.’
‘His trustees being Uncle Diogenes and Derryhick.’
‘If that’s the case,’ put in Rablé, ‘why would this Stuart go to the trouble of hiring a man to divide Mamzelle from his nephew, when he had only to forbid the banns?’
‘Probably because he could not come up with a convincing reason for wanting to retain control of the property,’ said January thoughtfully. ‘And again, I don’t think he’d want to offend the man who, in eight years, one way or the other, was going to be in charge of sending him his quarterly allowance.’
The smell of woodsmoke from a score of cook fires drifted through the darkness, and like jewels on indigo velvet, he could see the dim flare of them between the cabins of the quarters where the women – who had been picking cotton since it grew light enough to see – now stirred stews of salt-pork and potatoes, collards and corn, to be gulped down before they slept to wake to another day’s work. Doesn’t Rablé understand that the world is changing? he thought, seeing his host turn his head at the sound of voices from the quarters. A few hours in his company had taught January that the older man was, like himself, a Frenchman, rather than an African, in his heart. Can’t he see that it’s only a matter of time before the American tide overwhelms even this slow and sleepy land where libres are safe? All those fine divisions between griffe and quadroon and musterfino, which Maman’s friends and the gens du couleur libre here spend so much of their time arguing about . . . Doesn’t he see – don’t THEY all see – that it’s only a matter of time before the Americans take over completely? The Americans, who don’t care how much African blood is in your veins when a single drop will allow them to sell you and make a profit, and that’s all that matters?
And his heart went out, unexpectedly, to Martin Quennell. Like Compair Lapin, doing whatever he had to do to survive in a world where no man with a provable drop of African blood in him would be allowed to vote, would be permitted to testify in court against a white man, would be considered a citizen of the country or the state he lived in.
How hard had it been to turn his back on his mother and his brother, on all his friends? To trade the comfort of the family that loved him for the rights of manhood?
To know that his home would always be the equivalent of McPhearson’s Rooming House, impersonal and secret? That when his family gathered in the cemetery for the Feast of All Saints, all he would be able to do would be to jest about it with American friends?
After a time he said, ‘But you’re right, sir. There’s something here I don’t understand, facts I need to know, before I c
an go into a court and say, “This was the man who struck down Patrick Derryhick, and this is why.” Because both of the other men who could have done the crime have stories of their whereabouts that cannot be proven false. And unless we can prove who was the true killer, and why he is so eager to prevent the Viscount’s wedding, there is nothing to keep him from striking again. It’s why I need to find Blessinghurst before Louis Verron does. What you’ve told me has helped me immeasurably, Mamzelle.’ He turned his eyes to Isobel, sitting with hands folded, in the flickering light looking tired and spent. ‘I haven’t uncovered a single piece of treasure yet – but you’ve given me the map to tell me where to dig.’
‘I shall pray for you, then, M’sieu Janvier,’ said the girl. ‘Since it seems that it is the only thing I’m able to do.’
‘No,’ corrected her grandfather, and a glint crossed those blue, African eyes. ‘While you’re waiting you can sew for your trousseau, Mamzelle –’ from his pocket he drew out a piece of paper and held it out to January – ‘and we’ll both of us see how much help this will buy.’
January unfolded it. It was a bank draft for five hundred dollars.
TWENTY-FIVE
January remained at Bayou Lente for another day, while Cadmus Rablé sent his overseer’s seventeen-year-old son over to the other side of Cloutierville, with a description of the cloven water-locust in which January’s free papers were hidden and instructions to retrieve Rose’s compass from the storekeeper. It was Wednesday before the Parnassus – laden to the top deck with the first bales of the cotton crop from the plantations upriver – was sighted, picking its way through the snags and shallows to the plantation dock.
‘Damn,’ said Sam, when January came aboard, ‘you just lost me seven dollars and fifty cents, brother!’ and they clasped hands in welcome. ‘You don’t look like a man gonna be haulin’ wood for his passage, neither.’
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