Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘Ah’ve done t’ like,’ agreed Singletary, nodding – though he was just as likely to get off at the wrong landing even with his glasses on.

  ‘Could someone go search for him, m’am?’ Ellie turned to Chloë. ‘I just hate to cause this kind of uproar, but …’ She hesitated again, and January could have sworn he saw fear flicker in her eyes. Then she smiled, with the diplomatic readiness of one who’s worked with drunks half her life, and explained, ‘Well, I’m sure nobody’s comfortable, all crowded in on top of each other.’

  ‘Père Eugenius is near-sighted,’ said January patiently. ‘But even without his spectacles he’s neither blind nor stupid. And he’s been in this country for nine years, and down the river a dozen times. Even if he’d never been ashore here, he knows enough to ask someone the name of a plantation landing before stepping ashore.’

  ‘What’s more likely,’ said Hannibal, ‘is that he went ashore with the fellow who took sick – you did say one of Uncle Mick’s boys was put off sick at English Turn, didn’t you, Madame?’

  ‘Tommy,’ agreed Chloë. ‘According to M’sieu St-Ives. Surprisingly mild nomenclature, given that the others all seem to have names like the Black Duke and the Gopher. It’s very possible, if the young man was taken seriously ill.’ Her pale brows knit with some hidden concern. ‘Goodness knows a man of their appearance might have difficulty finding anyone to look after him, in a strange country, if a priest wasn’t along to vouch for him. I don’t think there are any settlements, even of the most rudimentary sort, along the river between here and English Turn, and English Turn consists of no more than a tavern, a wood lot, and a livery stable.’

  ‘An’ down-river?’ asked Singletary. ‘Might there be a priest in t’back country? At this – what? – this Willis Point that’s down-river o’ here? Or back o’ here in t’ woods? Would it fash you to be wed by summat less’n a full-blowed cathedral priest in all his tail-feathers, lass?’

  He turned to Ellie as he spoke, and Rose put in, ‘Madame Molina would know.’

  ‘I’m sure it would make no difference.’ Veryl reached across, to pat his bride’s hand. ‘If the matter can be accomplished this evening. Good gracious, mignonne, your little hand is cold! Are you certain you’re all right?’

  And he peered anxiously at her face, which she turned quickly aside before looking at him again with her warm, professional smile. ‘Just … Just so wound up over this delay, and the terrible things I know your family say and think. Not you, m’am,’ she added quickly to Chloë, who like her uncle was studying her face intently. ‘Thank you ever so, for coming in to share lunch with me, even though you had all those people here at the house! It just … Sometimes Uncle Mick …’ She colored slightly, though under her rouge January thought – as well as he could judge in the dim-lit bedchamber – that she was indeed looking suddenly pale.

  In confusion, she concluded, ‘He does go on so.’

  Chloë’s lips tightened. ‘Having been gone on at myself, dear,’ she said in her small silvery voice, ‘I would certainly not have left you to face the man alone.’

  ‘And now I – I really must be getting back.’ Ellie got quickly to her feet, and shook out her borrowed skirts. Her voice sounded just the slightest bit tinny with strain. ‘St-Ives must be done clearing up by now. Goodness knows what that … what Madame Aurelié and Old Madame Janvier and all those others are going to say if they find I’ve put one foot in your bedroom, Mr St-Chinian – and before the wedding, too!’

  ‘Hannibal, see if the coast is clear,’ instructed January. ‘M’sieu St-Chinian, if you went out onto the gallery with those reassuring words about the wedding definitely taking place tomorrow, that would draw everyone to the gallery and give Madamoiselle time to get far enough from the house that she’ll be mistaken for Valla, if anyone sees her.’

  Rose promptly removed her tignon, and with a few quick twists wrapped its white folds around Ellie’s golden curls – fair as Valla was, January guessed the mistress could easily pass for the maid at fifty feet from the house. While this disguise was being undertaken he, Hannibal, and Singletary followed Uncle Veryl from the room and threaded their way among the chairs in the parlor to the French doors at the front of the house.

  Behind them, Chloë called out, ‘I’ll have Molina put a flag on the landing …’

  But within five minutes, January’s proposed errand to New Orleans was a dead issue.

  As he stepped out onto the shaded heat of the gallery in the old man’s wake, January heard a young man yell, ‘Traitor!’

  ‘Evard—’ pleaded Charlotte, and reached to take her blonde-haired suitor’s arm.

  Evard Aubin thrust her aside and stepped belligerently toward the taller, slender, dark young man who’d come riding up half an hour before. ‘Your filthy Italian dictator was a traitor—’ Evard nearly spat the words into Jules’s fine-boned face – ‘and that nancy son of his who spent his whole life sucking off the Emperor of Austria: he was a traitor—’

  ‘And I suppose that fat usurper squatting on the throne is a rightful monarch?’ retorted Jules. ‘Or his regicide father?’

  ‘Oh, Jules, no—’ Charlotte Viellard made another fluttering attempt to get between the two crimson-faced young men, and January wondered how much of the quarrel actually had to do with French politics and how much to do with marrying the (potential) heiress to a share of the Viellard/St-Chinian holdings.

  Neither contestant gave her so much as a glance.

  ‘And as for that cheating sneak who calls himself Napoleon these days, hiding in London and kissing the Queen’s fat little arse—’

  With a movement as quick and casual as swatting a fly, the dark-haired Jules whipped his riding gloves from where they’d been tucked in the bosom of his jacket and struck Evard across the face with them. Everyone on the gallery around them gasped and drew back, Charlotte screamed and sagged, as if fainting, into the arms of her brother Henri (but she kept her eyes open and on the fracas), and Evard, with a snarl like a bulldog, lunged for his rival’s throat.

  They were young men, and strong, and those closest to them on the gallery were, as it happened, mostly the women of the party: Madame Aurelié, old Sidonie Janvier, Henri’s sisters Euphémie and Ophélie. The men were grouped around the lawyers on the front steps. The nearest of them – Florentin Miragouin – made a half-hearted movement to separate the struggling pair, but it was Uncle Veryl who pushed forward, crying, ‘Stop it, now! Stop it!’ and Madame Janvier’s little pug Thisbe, roused to martial fervor, lunged at Evard’s ankle.

  Though he hadn’t the slightest intention of laying a hand on any white man, much less a young, furious, and murderously inclined Creole French gentleman, January surged after Veryl, and so was at Jules’ very elbow when the young man broke violently free of the stranglehold, leaped back, tripped over Thisbe and crashed right through the gallery railing. January sprang to drag him to safety – it was an eight-foot drop to the ground – collided with him instead, and Jules clutched blindly at him for support.

  January in turn grabbed for the nearest of the pilasters that supported the gallery roof, and missed.

  There was a long drop and they both landed hard.

  NINE

  For one second January felt nothing except the shock of having the breath knocked out of him. He was dimly aware of voices shouting and the wild clatter of feet on the gallery steps, of not being able to breathe and of Thisbe licking his face. Then the pain started as if the Spanish Inquisition were crushing his right foot in a leg-screw, and his breath returned enough for him to give a howl of pain that dignity required him to turn into the worst curse he could think of.

  Everyone was of course clustering around Jules.

  The Frenchman, apparently unhurt, lunged to his feet and slapped Aubin – one of the first to arrive at his side – with his open hand, shouting, ‘Dog! I will meet you tomorrow on the levee and feed your tripes to the catfish!’

  Then Hannibal and Rose were bending ove
r January, and he managed to grate through his teeth, ‘I will murder the first person who tells me it could have been worse.’

  ‘It will be worse,’ Rose informed him calmly, ‘when we try to get you back to the weaving house. Where are you hurt?’

  ‘Leg,’ said January, under the increasing din that surrounded the white members of the party. He had to clench his teeth hard. ‘Ankle, I think.’ He flexed his hands, moved his head, and discovered that apparently every muscle in his body was connected to his medial malleolus.

  ‘And me without a drop of laudanum on me.’ Theatrically, Hannibal patted all his pockets, though he’d given up the drug himself over two years before.

  ‘Madame Molina will have some.’ Rose shooed the lapdog out of her way, and stood to search for the overseer’s wife in the ever-thickening group.

  ‘If she doesn’t, there’s some Hooper’s Female Elixir in the Casita.’

  Whoever it was who eventually fetched some – while most of the whites were re-ascending the gallery stair to the house again – they mixed the opiate with not quite enough water, so not only was the pain dulled when they pulled off January’s boot, but he had only a muddled awareness of being carried on a makeshift litter the two hundred yards to the weaving house. This annoyed him, in a distant fashion, for he was well aware that his subsequent instructions to Rose as to how to bandage his ankle were less than coherent. He was also (he thought even at the time) disproportionately vexed that his mother, and several of the other female guests at the weaving house, were far more concerned about the identity of Charlotte Viellard’s new suitor, and the prospect of tomorrow’s duel.

  ‘That will be Jules-Napoleon Mabillet,’ surmised Laetitia, who was among the group gathered outside the open doors of the room that had been given to Minou, Rose, and Minou’s little family – no one had seriously considered even attempting to carry January up the narrow ladder to the attic where the musicians had slept last night.

  ‘Heavens!’ declared Livia, in genuine surprise. ‘I’d heard Marie-Honorine Mabillet was the first mama to pull her son away from Mamzelle Charlotte when St-Chinian’s engagement to the Irish whore was announced.’

  ‘She was,’ affirmed Solange. ‘No, Stanislas, darling, put that down … But I can’t think what other Jules fits Hannibal’s description of the young man—’

  ‘I’d heard La Mabillet was obliging Jules-Napoleon to hang out after the Peralta girl …’

  ‘Yes, but the only other Jules anywhere near the right age is Jules-Joseph Lafrennière, and his whole family are Legitimistes and would never get into a fight on behalf of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.’

  ‘Do you know what weapon Aubin will choose?’

  ‘He’s said to be an absolute demon with a sword …’

  January closed his eyes and let his head drop back on the pillow. He was dimly concerned that Rose would make an absolute botch of the bandaging but was also aware – like a little dark seed of clear-headedness in a swoony vapor of half-dreams – that in his heart he believed that everyone would make a botch of medical matters that he wasn’t himself there to oversee. He’d mapped out how he was going to re-bandage the ankle, and what he was going to say to Père Eugenius when confessing the sin of – does that count as Pride or Officiousness? – when he drifted off to sleep.

  Besides, where is Père Eugenius anyway? Bound hand and foot in his own confessional? Wandering the back-roads of the swamps without his glasses, ciborium in hand, looking for the wedding?

  Even in sleep, January felt the sweep of rain-clouds as they passed across the plantation, the wind rattling the young shoulder-high cane and keening around the corners of the weaving house. He heard the sweet lilt of quadrilles and mescolanzes, Scotch reels and German waltzes, from the attic above him as his fellow musicians rehearsed. Of course the folks in the big house are going to want music tonight, wedding or no wedding …

  He wondered if, with the aid of a crutch and a much more restrained dose of laudanum, he’d be able to hobble over to join them – better than lying here, anyway.

  In the room next door – the one grudgingly shared by Laetitia and her widowed daughter with Solange Aubin and her precious Stanislas – he heard voices gently chattering, with now and then words concerning the possibility of dancing at the big house that evening if the wind-squalls died down, ‘Which it looks like they’re going to,’ added Marcellite St-Chinian – Laetitia’s daughter – her clear voice youthful though she was in her forties.

  ‘As if that Viellard witch is going to hold any sort of dance for the likes of us,’ drawled Isabelle. January wondered if she referred to Madame Aurelié or Madame Chloë.

  ‘Well, even if the weather clears,’ pointed out Minou’s sweet tones, ‘they can’t very well hold a dance for themselves in the house without moving all those chairs.’

  Piercingly, little Stanislas let out a scream followed at once by a gale of hysterical giggles. ‘Now, precious, be good,’ coaxed Solange, to little avail.

  ‘It’ll clear,’ added Livia, her smoky inflection reminding January of her daughter Olympe’s. ‘But it’ll be hot as a Turkish bath and then I shouldn’t be surprised if there was a worse storm on the way.’

  His mother, January reflected, still plunged in half-dreams like a wreck on the ocean floor, was probably the only woman present who had actual experience of watching the weather in the country. His mother and Rose, who had spent her adolescence on the barrier islands of the Gulf. Death in the water. He heard the echo of Olympe’s voice in his cloudy dreams. Death in the fire.

  Death coming for Mamzelle Ellie? In the water, in the fire?

  He drifted deeper into sleep.

  Heat woke him. His mother had certainly been right about the flittering spookiness of the storm-breezes being followed by the steamy stillness of a Turkish bath. The voices were more audible now, because the long windows of his room stood open to whatever breath might be moving in off the river (none was) and everyone was out on the gallery again. By the light it was an hour or so before sunset. He wondered if anyone had put out a flag on the landing, and who Ellie had gotten to go to New Orleans in his stead.

  ‘—can only consider it a blessing,’ his mother was declaring. ‘What on earth they’re going to do with the little slut in the family I can’t imagine. The old man must be senile …’

  ‘Well, M’sieu Brinvilliers tells me,’ said Nicolette, ‘that according to M’sieu DuPage – the Janvier family lawyer, you know – Madame Aurelié and Madame Euphémie have been trying to prove it for the past year – really, ever since M’sieu César died.’

  ‘Now, that’s unjust,’ protested Laetitia. ‘And I’m sure in her better moods Aurelié is perfectly aware of it. My brother is eccentric, of course, but he’s perfectly sane. And it’s very kindly of him, to look after the education of his nieces and nephews the way he does—’

  ‘Kindly?’ Livia sounded as if someone had tried to convince her that a cockroach in the oatmeal was a currant. ‘Turning Madame Chloë into a frigid bluestocking? The whole problem would never have come about if the girl weren’t a cold-blooded ice-princess that no man – let alone a tub of flan like Henri – would get children on.’

  His mother had clearly, January reflected, reached the limit of her patience with the crowded quarters of the weaving house – albeit that she was the only person in residence who had a room of her own.

  ‘Maman!’ protested Dominique.

  ‘You know it’s true.’ January could just imagine his mother’s great brown eyes turned upon his sister with irrefutable calm. ‘Henri Viellard is a perfectly pleasant young man, but even you must admit that he cares more for his dinner and his seashell collection than he does for either of you. And if he’s even attempted to get that bride of his with child it’s more than I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Maman, I will admit nothing of the kind!’ It was Minou’s genius, thought January admiringly, that her laughing voice turned the whole discussion into banter. ‘And you will have
to admit that in Madame Chloë, Henri has a wife who can talk to him about his frightful insect collections and what birds he’s seen and what Julius Caesar said to Alexander the Great at Christmas in 200 B.C. without running screaming out of the room—’

  ‘Exactly!’ proclaimed Solange impatiently. ‘What man in his senses speaks so to his wife? Livia is right, it’s Veryl the family has to thank, that Henri’s only child is Minou’s daughter.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s senile!’

  ‘What else do you call it,’ retorted Livia, ‘when a man of sixty-seven starts drooling over some round-heeled tavern slut – and asks her to marry him? And buys her those frightful dresses? God knows who she’ll be pregnant by, before the end of the year. Yes, girl, what is it?’

  Rigid with fury, Valla’s voice said, ‘Madamoiselle sent to ask, is there any of the oranges left from lunch, that got brought over here? M’am Molina says as how there’s none left in the kitchen, nor from the white folks’ luncheon, but that she had sent over more than a dozen here. Might there be one or two here that you could spare back?’

  January turned his head on the pillow and – as he thought he’d recalled – he saw one of the fruits that had decorated the luncheon table on the gallery, lying on a china plate on the little table beside Minou’s pallet bed where he lay.

  He heard his sister say, ‘We have—’ but their mother cut her off.

  ‘I’m so sorry—’ by her tone she clearly wasn’t sorry in the least – ‘but we haven’t any to spare. I’m afraid Mamzelle—’ her voice slid with oily sarcasm over the honorific – ‘will have to get her little treats elsewhere.’

  ‘Madamoiselle—’ Valla pronounced the word with painstaking perfection – ‘asked me specially, and I see three of them in there right through that door there.’

  ‘Madamoiselle,’ returned Livia sarcastically, ‘can evidently take whatever she wishes away from her sweetheart’s guests, so obviously we can’t stop her, or you.’

  Through the open door of his own room January saw Valla’s mouth twist as the girl took a step toward the door of the room beside his. Livia folded her arms and added, ‘And I can only hope that Madamoiselle is adequately feathering her nest – and that you are feathering yours – against the day when her light o’ love wakes up and realizes how far above herself she’s gotten.’