Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  Etienne pushed the question aside. Armand wasn’t needed. The waters parted of their own accord, and Etienne strode across the Place d’Armes with a self-consciously ceremonial pace, extending each foot out with dignity and stepping heel-first. He entered the Place d’Armes from the ruined cathedral, appearing from behind the jagged stump of a shattered column and crossing toward the three iron cages.

  For years the cages had held the pretender Andrew Jackson and two of his lieutenants, killed in Jackson’s 1810 attempt to carve a kingdom for himself out of the Mississippi. The lieutenants were still there, skeletal and moldering, but Jackson had been taken out, and his body replaced with the corpse of Thijs Van Dijk. The former city councilor was bloated with the recent rains, his flesh puckered and white, his eyes melting already into pools of worm-ridden corruption.

  Standing beneath the fresh corpse, Etienne turned to face the crowd. He stood on their level, and that was important. The Brides would carry his words to all of them, and that was important, too.

  The crowd hushed itself in anticipation.

  “During his lifetime, the enemies of Our Lord included not only the Romans who pounded in the nails,” he began slowly, “but also the Pharisees who connived at the action. The priests and the choosers of priests.”

  He felt the thrill of the Brides, which had been humming a low basso within his body all day, begin to rise in pitch. Strangely, he couldn’t tell whether he was speaking French or English.

  The crowd nodded.

  “And these priestly conspirators one day sent their disciples to try to trap Our Lord. How to ‘entangle’ him, the gospel tells us. And after some flattery designed to put Our Lord at ease, they asked: ‘What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?’” He paused, letting them remember the story. “And what did Our Lord say to these betrayers?”

  “Render under Caesar.” The first to give the answer was a heavyset Creole man clutching a straw hat to his chest, but others quickly took up the phrase.

  Etienne nodded. “‘Render unto Caesar.’ Not render unto Caesar everything, of course. ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.’”

  “‘And unto God the things that are God’s,’” the Creole with the hat added.

  Etienne rewarded him with a gesture of blessing. “But not the things that are God’s.” He paused again, giving the crowd time to think about the implications of his words and guess where he might be going with the sermon.

  “In recent days,” he continued, “our good City Council and the chevalier have had a disagreement. Perhaps you have heard of it.” Nodding heads. “It was a disagreement such as often is had between the wealthy and powerful, a disagreement over taxes. I would not bore you with the details, even if I were master of them myself, and I am not. In its essence, the disagreement is this: the City Council said that the chevalier collected taxes to which he was not entitled. He took too much.

  “How should the chevalier, a great man, a wealthy man and a man of power, an Elector under Franklin’s compact, react to such a suggestion?” Etienne knitted his fingers together, a gesture intended to look contemplative and pious at the same time. “He could have argued. He could have tried to persuade the City Council of his view. He could have opened up his books to say ‘look, here are the funds flowing in and what I have done with them, tell me if you would prefer me to have done something else!’ Indeed, he too could have quoted the twenty-second chapter of Matthew. ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,’ he might have said. ‘And as I, the Chevalier of New Orleans, am the Caesar of Louisiana, render unto me these tariffs and tolls, that I may have funds from which to care for the poor.’”

  This last point was a deliberate jab; the bishopric cared for the poor, funding various hospitals, hospices, and workhouses. The chevalier’s expenses in the public interest included such items as roads and docks, law enforcement, and defense.

  “But he did none of those things.” Etienne stopped and looked over his shoulder at the bloated, rotting corpse of Thijs Van Dijk. Poor stupid bastard. When Etienne had warned the councilors that he expected the chevalier to come for them, Van Dijk was the one who had refused to go underground. Etienne had offered him resources, places to stay. Van Dijk had been sure his station would protect him.

  It hadn’t.

  Very well. Etienne would play the cards he had been dealt.

  “Thijs Van Dijk was a good man. He was a family man. He built good furniture and he sold it for a fair price, and if he haggled a little more fiercely than some of his suppliers might like, well, that is the nature of a commercial society, is it not? But Thijs served the city as councilor for many years, and he gave to the poor.” Etienne had no idea whether Thijs gave alms to the poor. He doubted it. “Meneer Van Dijk was a member of that very City Council that refused to approve the quarterly tax returns when ordered by the chevalier.

  “Note: no indictment was filed. No assets of the chevalier were seized. The returns were not approved, a minor thing. A minor thing that might have been followed by negotiations, questions, the sharing of information, loving persuasion.

  “In this case, though, it was followed by murder.”

  The congregation was rapt. He saw it in their faces. He felt it in the song of the Brides.

  Etienne raised his voice. “I ask you this: was Thijs Van Dijk obligated to render his integrity unto Caesar? His soul? Was he required to give his life to the chevalier?”

  “No!” cried a woman’s voice from the crowd.

  “No!” Etienne roared, shaking a clenched fist.

  “No!” the crowd bellowed.

  Etienne lowered his voice, barely above a whisper. The Brides would ensure he was still heard. “No. Thijs Van Dijk rendered unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s. And when Caesar took too much, when Caesar became a mere robber, Thijs Van Dijk rendered his integrity and faith unto God, and told the truth about Caesar. And for that, Caesar murdered him.”

  Silence.

  Etienne reached beneath his chasuble and removed a folded copy of the broadsheet he himself had written and distributed under the name Publius. He unfolded it and held it high over his head, showing it to the crowd. The Brides would make certain that people saw it clearly, even those who were too far away to see the paper well with their natural eyes.

  “Someone has written about the chevalier’s taxes. Someone who calls himself Publius, the man of the people. He suggests dark things about the Chevalier of New Orleans. He accuses our chevalier of murdering our former bishop. My father.” To his surprise, his own words brought Etienne a flood of emotion and he struggled against tears.

  Be strong, my son.

  “I did not witness my father’s death, and I do not know the truth of this matter. But should we not investigate the question? Should we not seek to know the truth?”

  “The murderer was a guest of the chevalier!” This from an unseen face in the crowd.

  “Was Thijs Van Dijk Publius?” Etienne shrugged. “How can we ever know, now? But should not this incident as well be investigated?” He paused. “Should we not cease to pay our tolls and our taxes to the chevalier until we know the truth?”

  “Yes!” cried many in the crowd, with one voice. “No more taxes! Not one sou!”

  “The cathedral.” Etienne raised his arm and gestured across the Place d’Armes as the scorched stone husk. “We, the people of New Orleans, built that cathedral.” In fact, the building had been built by the old corrupt bishops, the chevalier’s de Bienville cousins. “We rendered our labor and our wealth unto God, and we built him a house, and a seat for his servant, the bishop.

  “Did the chevalier murder the bishop? We should investigate. And we should also investigate the destruction of our cathedral. Fire caused by lightning, say some of the news-papers. The Picayune Gazette says so. Of course, the Picayune Gazette is owned by the chevalier. The Pontchartrain Herald says there were explosions, and indeed, who ever heard of lightning causin
g a stone building to burn down? Those of us who live in the Vieux Carré heard explosions. We saw the explosion that broke the cathedral’s back, we heard the explosion that shattered the foundations we so carefully laid and consecrated to God. We heard the explosion that hurled the altar itself from the cathedral and left it lying in the mud and the rain. Why would the Picayune Gazette try to hide these explosions? Why would the chevalier try to conceal the truth of the events?

  “Is it because once again the chevalier’s foreign visitors are responsible? An Imperial soldier visiting the chevalier in his Palais murdered the bishop. Mameluke envoys visiting the chevalier from France were seen entering the cathedral and then leaving it again, shortly before it was destroyed. Those who saw them enter report they carried casks and crates, gunpowder and oil lanterns.” This was a bald lie; Etienne had been unable to find any witnesses who’d seen the mamelukes enter, and when they’d come out, they’d been empty-handed.

  “Yes!” cried voices in the crowd.

  “We rendered our bishop unto God, and the chevalier killed him. We rendered a cathedral unto God, and the chevalier in his envy caused it to be destroyed. The Chevalier of New Orleans, it seems, cannot abide that God should have anything. Caesar wishes all things to be rendered unto him.”

  “No more taxes!” shouted the Creole with the straw hat.

  “After my father’s death, I was pleased to serve in his place. God knows, as you all know, that I have not always been a righteous man.” Etienne shrugged slightly, trying to look self-deprecating and humble without appearing too dismissive of his own wickedness. “But God looked into my heart and saw fit to call me, anyway.” He smiled, again, a restrained expression. “Perhaps God thought that a city of sinners would be best served by a bishop with some experience of sin.”

  Warm laughter.

  “And so, called by the Synod, I rendered my life to God. I would be his servant, I would walk among the poor to bless, to comfort, to distribute alms.” This part was true. “And I did my best.

  “Now the chevalier says I am to be removed. Why? Because I am not an honest man. Because I have stolen the bishopric’s funds for my own purposes.”

  Murmurs of disbelief.

  “But I ask the chevalier this: if the funds of the bishopric have been so badly used, how is it that the proper man to replace me is the parish beadle, the very man who manages those funds?”

  Etienne shook his head in skepticism. “No, I tell you this, I did not steal from the bishopric, I did not steal from the poor. The beadle, August Planchet, is a good man, and he also did not steal from the parish. What we have here is a chevalier who is a jealous Caesar, and must have all things. He could not abide that the bishopric was honestly administered, and so he took it. He installed a new bishop, making false accusations against the old one…against me.

  “Shall we render our bishop unto Caesar?”

  “No!”

  Etienne shook his head. “And yet, Caesar has taken two bishops from us. My father he killed. Me, he has pretended to remove from office.”

  Whimpering sounds, and the sniffing of held-back tears.

  “Shall we render our house of God unto Caesar?”

  “No!”

  Etienne’s shoulders sagged. “And yet, Caesar has destroyed it, leaving not one stone upon a stone.”

  Weeping.

  Etienne turned slightly, gesturing at Van Dijk’s corpse. “Shall we render our integrity unto Caesar? Shall we render unto him our souls? Shall we render unto him our lives, when he sees fit to murder us?”

  “No!”

  “The Bishop!” the Creole with the hat cried.

  Etienne looked up at Van Dijk and staggered, falling to his knees. It was not a rehearsed gesture, not theatrics; the countenance of Thijs Van Dijk had changed. Perhaps it was the dim light of the evening, or the irregular shadows from the lights of the Place d’Armes, or a trick of the mind caused by Etienne’s rhetoric, or the work of the Brides, but Van Dijk’s face was gone.

  In its place was the face of Etienne’s father.

  Taken by surprise, Etienne found himself weeping. The Brides wrapped their arms around him, warming him, loving him. It was not enough. He missed his father. He missed his brother Chigozie, who had never understood him, but who had always been the best of men and an honest priest. He wrapped his hand around his mother’s locket, seeking comfort from his gede loa.

  We love you, son.

  Etienne struggled to rise to his feet, and found the Creole helping him, along with others from the crowd. Strangers. Parishioners. His flock.

  “Caesar wants everything,” he gasped. “He takes what is not offered to him. He takes the things we have offered to God, the things we can only offer to God. We must teach Caesar a lesson.”

  “No more taxes!” shouted the Creole.

  “No more taxes,” Etienne agreed. “No more tariffs. No more tolls. We must show Caesar that he can only have the things we choose to render unto him, only the things that are due to him. We must have a chastened Caesar, a Caesar who will enforce the laws fairly and justly, who will not murder or rob.”

  “No more taxes!” the crowd shouted together.

  “Caesar will try to take his tariffs and tolls by force. We must help each other resist. When our sister is robbed by Caesar, we must help her feed her children. When our brother is beaten by Caesar’s thugs, we must bind his wounds and nurse him back to health. Only together will we be strong enough to chasten Caesar, so that we may again render unto God the things that are God’s.”

  Etienne collapsed into the arms of the man with the straw hat and Monsieur Bondí. The two men carried him through the crowd as the crowd took up the chant, passing it further and further back across the Place d’Armes and deep into the Vieux Carré.

  “No more taxes! No more taxes! No more taxes!”

  Fires had sprung up in two buildings along the periphery of the Place d’Armes. As Etienne looked, a third conflagration burst into life, shattering the storefront windows of a high-priced bakery.

  The crowd was rioting.

  Etienne struggled to look back and find again the image of his father, but it was gone. In its place was the ghoulish face of Thijs Van Dijk, grinning at Etienne with puffed lips and empty eye sockets.

  “This is no ordinary wagon.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Philadelphia was larger than New Orleans. If possible, it was also more grand.

  Kinta Jane was unfazed by the Babel of languages around her, though, which was more subdued than the linguistic storm on the Pontchartrain. Most people around her spoke English, though there was plenty of Dutch, French, and Haudenosaunee, and more than a smattering of other tongues. But her head spun at the blossoming of shops all around her and at the new construction. Philadelphia was New Orleans, but bigger, newer, and growing, whereas New Orleans was old, chipping, and slowly decaying into the bayou on which it sat. Philadelphia had just as much sweat and horse manure on the breeze as her sister on the Mississippi, but lacked the pervasive tang of salt and mud.

  Horse Hall was vast, a block of stone on a stone plaza, intricately carved on the outside into the shapes of rearing horses, eagles with spread wings, and sailing ships, rather than with gargoyles. Kinta Jane recognized those icons from the Imperial seal. More subtly, she noticed that woven among those elements were others: some of the eagles clutched swords in their talons; some of the horses drank from cups, and others bore shields; many of the ships sailed underneath clouds from which fell long bolts of lightning.

  The Franklin Seal, then, as well as the Imperial. The four suits of his Tarock, corresponding to the four seal components: the sword that was the letter T that stood for Tarock; the cup that was an upended C that stood for the Compact and, for those who knew, the Conventicle; the B for bishopric that was also a shield; and the bolt of lightning.

  This was a Franklin place. That thought allowed Kinta Jane Embry to relax.

  Slightly.

  “Why on e
arth would they allow me into a place so grand?” she asked Isaiah Wilkes. Now that she could speak again, she forced herself to think of him as Isaiah Wilkes, and not as the Franklin. If she thought the Franklin, the words might actually escape her lips at an inopportune moment.

  “Because they know me as one of the Lightning Mummers.” He smiled, his solemn and somewhat plain face becoming instantly lively and attractive.

  “You mean the Franklin Players?”

  “Yes. And as one of the Players, one day I saved the Emperor Thomas’s life.”

  “Who from?”

  “Why, from me, of course.” Wilkes’s grin disappeared. “I am, after all, a man of the theater.”

  Kinta Jane didn’t understand, but she let it lie.

  “And as a man of the theater, I have one small, final piece to perform for my friend Thomas.”

  “Do I have a role in that piece?”

  “You have the most important role. You’ll play the Teller of Truths.”

  “What must I do?”

  “You’ve learned your speech. Be prepared to give it.”

  They approached the main entrance to Horse Hall across broad flagstones. At the front door stood four men in Imperial blue, with two short-haired mastiffs. When she was thirty steps away, both dogs rose to their feet and began to bark angrily at Kinta Jane.

  When she was twenty feet away, their sound stopped.

  They continued to open their jaws and snap them shut, as if they were barking. Their eyes continued to be screwed into fierce, hostile glares, foam dripped from their jaws to the stone, but the sound of their barking simply ceased.

  “What is wrong with the dogs?” she whispered.

  “It’s an old, old spell.” Wilkes smiled.

  “What is? Are you casting the spell?”

  “No, my friend, you are. Burglars take with them the tongue of a dog, often dried and placed within their shoe, but sometimes worn as an amulet about the neck or merely carried in a pocket.”

  “And that prevents the dogs from making a sound?”