Cold Bayou

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘Who by?’

  The planter shook his head, his cow-like, near-sighted brown eyes stricken. ‘Nobody will say. I’m sure some of the servants know but none of them will admit it, they just … You know how it is, when everybody in the place knows something and nobody’s going to tell you.’

  January knew it well. It was the way slaves protected one another from retaliatory beatings.

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Get me out of here,’ said January quietly. ‘Whoever did this may have missed something. Other than that, all we can do is wait til the waters go down.’

  TWENTY

  The chain that ran from January’s left wrist to the kingpost of the wood store’s roof was about six feet long; enough to permit him to use the latrine-bucket set in a corner of the wood piled along the walls, not enough to let him get close to the loft window. Part of that Thursday afternoon he sat at the full extent of the chain, three feet from the window, and watched the two rowboats – large and small – move between the big house, the stone tower of the sugar mill, the overseer’s cottage, (presumably) the weaving house – which was on the other side of the wood store – and (January hoped) the quarters, also out of his line of sight. From his own childhood experiences he guessed that those families that had been trapped on the roofs of their cabins were transported gradually to the sugar mill – he himself would not have wanted to try swimming in the floodwaters. Luc confirmed this, when late in the afternoon the young man arrived with a party of men under Michie Molina, to collect wood to boil drinking water.

  ‘You let him alone!’ Molina swung around at the sound of Luc’s voice, and gave a threatening crack of the six-foot horsewhip he carried in his belt. ‘You get on with your work, Luc. You, Ben, you move back and you don’t go tradin’ gossip with men who’re working.’

  January moved back obediently. Even as a child he’d known that nothing ever came to good from riling an overseer.

  Not if you were black, and chained to a kingpost.

  He watched the way the men moved, passing the wood from hand to hand and thus through the window and into the boat. Quick and cautious, and always keeping a surreptitious eye on that sturdy form in his coarse jacket of blue tweed. Despite the ferocious heat in the loft he kept the jacket on, as if he would not put aside this badge of command no matter how uncomfortable he was. January had seen this kind of thing before, in men of color who supervised the work of slaves: I’m not black. I’m not a slave. Don’t you go thinking I’m anything the same as these men.

  It was widely said among both blacks and whites, that the men of color who owned plantations – like Sylvestre St-Chinian – were harsher masters than the whites, though January didn’t know this from his own observation. Certainly at no point had Sylvestre – always attired in coat and cravat – ever been invited to socialize with the white planters of the family.

  In any case – he shook his head inwardly at the reflection – he himself, if he had business in the American section of New Orleans, would swelter and suffocate in a jacket and a cravat rather than go in his shirtsleeves and risk being mistaken for a slave. And not, he had to admit ruefully, entirely because of the danger from slave stealers.

  But Molina twice lashed his whip at the legs of men who were clearly doing their best, as if to establish beyond question his right to do so. And the overseer’s hard, turquoise-gray eyes had a defiant gleam, as if daring any of the men under his lash to claim kinship.

  A man whose anger was rooted in fear.

  January was conscious, also, of the way the three field hands kept glancing at him, and remembered old Madame Janvier’s words about slaves who ‘ran away’. To slave dealers like the local smuggler Captain Chamoflet, who evaded American and British navies to sell Africans illegally to the sugar planters, it would be just as easy to buy a man from an unscrupulous overseer and re-sell him in Galveston, now that Texas was an independent republic.

  How easy would it be to claim that an accused murderer – and a man who feared enslavement to the likes of Mick Trask – had somehow managed to break his chain and flee across the waters, never to be heard from again?

  Olympe was right.

  And every time I set foot out of the French Town, I’m sorry for it.

  Molina left him a jar of water, and a pone of cornbread. When the work-party had left January smelled the water, and though it was far from clean it had none of the half-bitter, flowery smell of opium. Nevertheless he set it aside, and the cornbread also, having taken the precaution of hiding some of the food Uncle Bichet had brought earlier. Five minutes after the men had gone, the rats re-appeared, dozens of them, lurking among the wood and watching him and his food.

  Every rat, in fact, he reflected wearily, who inhabited the wood stores, and the attics of the cabins, and the woods, in company with (he counted) four raccoons, three muskrats, five or six squirrels, several rabbits, and a snapping-turtle, all flushed out of their homes and, like the folks in the sugar mill, seeking a dry and alligator-free place to wait out the flood. By the sound of it, more were assembled on the roof. (And by the sound of it, he reflected, they were dancing quadrilles.) To entertain himself, he gathered a number of the smaller billets of wood from the piles within his reach, and practiced flinging them at his fellow passengers in this makeshift ark, but they quickly ascertained his range and afterwards disregarded him.

  Their bright red eyes in the dusk said, You gotta fall asleep sometime.

  Mostly, his foot hurt him too badly to do anything but lie on his back with his leg propped on a pile of wood, and think.

  About Ellie Trask.

  About the dead-huts.

  About all the little that he’d seen of the Casita that morning.

  About last night.

  Fitting information together, like pieces of a child’s ‘geography puzzle’. Recalling a few words here, a fragment of story there.

  Flurries of rain alternated with periods of gray stillness, through which he could hear music from the weaving house: Cochon, Jacques Bichet and his bespectacled old uncle, and handsome Philippe duCoudreau. ‘Gumbo Chaff’ and ‘Rose of Allendale’, the Lancers cotillion and the ballet of the mad ghosts of dancing nuns from Robert le Diable.

  Then during one episode of splattering rain he heard the unmistakable creak of oar-locks, and a few moments later a girl’s voice: ‘Hush! Just hush, and do what I say if you know what’s good for you!’

  It sounded like one of Henri’s sisters.

  Not Euphémie. The voices of the younger three were pretty much alike, shrill and hurried …

  Charlotte, he thought.

  And it was.

  Stony-faced with disapproval, Visigoth helped her over the windowsill and the girl marched determinedly over to January – who had risen, stiffly and in agony – and, taking a pistol from one skirt-pocket and a key from the other, she said, ‘You had best do what I say and no questions!’

  January said, ‘No, mamzelle.’

  Jules must be growing feverish. Men often did with the coming of evening.

  ‘Visigoth,’ she ordered, and the butler stepped grimly forward, took the key, and unlocked the spancel.

  ‘There’s no need to hold a pistol on me, mamzelle,’ said January gently. The weapon wasn’t cocked and he wondered if it was loaded. ‘I have spent much of the day worrying about Michie Jules—’ (a complete lie – between his concern about Chloë Viellard, and his concern about himself, his mind had touched on Jules Mabillet for all of about twenty seconds, once) – ‘and I wondered if you would have the courage to come and release me.’ (No harm in laying it on with a trowel.)

  ‘They wouldn’t let me.’ Charlotte drew herself up and her chin came forward as much as it was possible to do so; her shortsighted brown eyes blazed. ‘Maman, and Euphémie, and that horrid husband of hers. And it’s no good even trying to ask Uncle Veryl, he just lies in bed and moans. And you’re coming straight back here afterwards, so there’s really no harm done.’

&nb
sp; ‘As you wish, mamzelle.’ Plenty of time to see about that. ‘You didn’t happen to have someone fetch my bag from the weaving house, did you?’

  She looked stricken, but Visigoth said, ‘We’ve been bringing in every bottle and packet of medicine, from all over the house an’ the Casita too, an’ everythin’ that everybody had in their baggage, all day. For all the good it done.’ He bent his back to the oars as January, sweating with pain, gingerly lifted his hurt foot to the gunwale rather than place it on the seat next to Charlotte, who would almost certainly have considered it an unacceptable liberty. ‘I hope that does you.’

  The shutters in the big house had all been closed during the storm. The flash of rain had ceased again, but the wind rattled them, as Visigoth rowed them across, and around into the long center of the U between the house’s two wings.

  Leaning on the stick he’d provided himself with from his prison, January limped across the gallery and into the room assigned to Jules Mabillet. The pallet bed had been removed – presumably the three French lawyers had found accomodation elsewhere – and the small table from the parlor that had been set in its place was, indeed, lined with an informative array of medications. Six bottles of Godfrey’s Cordial (besides the one on the nightstand beside the bed), three of McMunn’s Elixir of Opium, a packet of Pow-Ness-Sa Uterine Wafers, two bottles of Hooper’s Female Elixir, a box of Old Sachem Female Pills, a bottle of Dr Bateman’s Pectoral Drops, a bottle of Fowler’s Solution for ague (a mild arsenic solution, January knew), several phials of mercury digestive pills, and four pots of assorted wrinkle and freckle creams.

  On the bed, Jules Mabillet lay, tossing feverishly and muttering in fitful spurts of words; gently opening his eyelid, January saw that even in the dimness of the shuttered room the pupil of his eye was contracted to a pinprick. He glanced at the bedside table, estimating the levels of medicine in the various bottles he’d seen there the previous afternoon, then frowned.

  ‘The medicines you brought here,’ he said, turning to Visigoth.

  The butler waved a disgusted hand at the collection on the small table. ‘If you’ll excuse me sayin’, sir, there’s not a thing here that improves on what you were giving him yesterday.’

  January turned his eyes back to the bedside bottles, reckoning them up, then to the butler again. ‘You didn’t bring over any of them from the table to the bedside?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mamzelle Charlotte?’

  The girl shook her head, eyes wide and filled with tears. ‘You have to help him …’

  ‘You haven’t given him anything from those at all?’

  ‘Only from what’s beside the bed,’ she whispered. ‘And only when he seemed to be in … in such terrible pain. Please, give him something …’

  ‘But you have been dosing him from these?’

  ‘Only this afternoon,’ said Charlotte, picking up one of the two silver spoons that lay among the bottles of Godfrey’s Cordial and Kendal Black Drop. ‘He was sound asleep all morning – I sat beside him. He never stirred until past noon …’

  I’ll bet he didn’t.

  January felt his heart quicken with anger as he looked at the bedside bottles, and with something else: the sharp anticipation that he felt, when part of a problem fell into place.

  ‘Then when he got restless I gave him some of the Cordial, but I didn’t give him any of that Black Drop stuff because I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t, mamzelle,’ said January, keeping his voice steady with an effort. ‘Black Drop is the strongest opiate on the market. It might easily have killed him.’ He took the spoon gently from her hand, and turned it over in his powerful fingers, then held it up with the other one, comparing them. ‘Visigoth, can you get me some hot water and bandages, please? I think the best thing we can do for him now is change his dressing.’

  ‘I have hot water here,’ said the butler, ‘in the veilleuse.’

  There were bandages still, folded up beside the bottles on the nightstand where January had left them the day before. Also, to his relief, his own packets of basilicum powder and willow-bark. Charlotte held Jules’ hands and turned her eyes modestly aside while January removed the old dressings and washed the wound. The inflammation had visibly abated, and such fluid as hadn’t been obliterated by the blood on the bandage was clear and nearly odorless. Jules flinched and moaned, whispering, ‘Maman! Maman, please …’

  ‘Can’t we give him even a little Cordial?’

  ‘I dare not, mamzelle. I don’t know how much laudanum he’s had, between what you’ve given him, and what others might have given – were you here with him last night?’

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘I came in this morning.’

  ‘Hecuba came in an’ checked on him, every hour or so,’ reported Visigoth. ‘Even with all the storm goin’, he slept like a baby. If she’d give him anythin’, she’d have told me, but she said he never stirred.’

  ‘Maman, please,’ breathed the young man on the bed. ‘I’ll be good. I swear I’ll be good. Just please let me … Just please let me have …’

  ‘Get all this rubbish out of here.’ January motioned toward the tablefull of Cordial, Elixir, and Vegetative Skin-Food on the other side of the room. ‘Lock it up in the pantry – this, too.’ He passed his hand over the bottles on the nightstand. ‘Is there still a little hot water there? Visigoth, could I get you – or Hecuba – to make up a little draught with this? It’s willow-bark, the main ingredient in a saline draught. It should bring down his fever. If you would …’

  He extracted his notebook from his pocket, and the stub of pencil he always carried, checked his watch, and asked Charlotte, ‘When was Jules last given Cordial? Just after the last rain started? That would have been … what? Four thirty? And how much? Good girl. You’ve done just exactly right. Visigoth, if you would be so good … Put all the cordials, everything, under lock and key, and don’t give poor Michie Jules anything until nine tonight. He’ll be uncomfortable,’ he added, turning to Charlotte. ‘And he’ll probably beg you for some. Distract his mind, hold his hands, put cold compresses on his face, whatever you need to do. You’ll need to be brave.’

  Her eyes flooding, the girl nodded.

  ‘He’s had too much. Someone gave him more – a lot more – than is good for him. We have to let some of it pass out of his system before he can have another dose. After that …’ He showed her what he’d written. ‘No more than that, at those times. Not before. Can you do that for him?’

  She took the paper and brought it to within an inch of her nose – she was as near-sighted as her brother – and sniffled. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘Did …?’ She clutched his sleeve, as he made to hand the bedside bottles to Visigoth. ‘Did somebody try to poison him?’

  He half-opened his mouth to reply, Only you, child, and then closed it again. Thinking.

  Thinking about the people in the house. About the people who’d come to Cold Bayou. And the reasons they had come.

  He said, ‘I’ll know more about this when I’ve been able to have a look at the Casita. You don’t happen to know who ordered it cleaned up, do you?’

  Charlotte shook her head, mousy curls bobbing, plainly baffled by the question. But glancing beside him, he saw Visigoth’s dark eyes narrow: the expression of a man who also sees a piece of a puzzle fall into place. Maybe only the fact that none of the other servants would say who had ordered it.

  Maybe something else.

  ‘If I’m to learn what happened – why it happened—’ he made a gesture that could have implied that someone attempting to poison Jules was connected to what had passed in the Casita last night … As indeed, he was beginning to think it might be – ‘I need to see the inside of the Casita. Visigoth, would you take me across?’

  A man who was in on the scheme would, January thought, have hesitated for an instant – or have answered with immediate assent. As it was, the butler frowned,
tallying who he’d get into trouble with. Charlotte pulled the pistol from the pocket of her dress, taking nearly a minute to do so (Thank God the thing isn’t cocked!), and handed it to Visigoth. ‘Bring him back here,’ she instructed. ‘Don’t let him take the boat and run away. I’m sorry,’ she added, looking back at January. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let you leave! Jules needs someone who knows what he’s doing—’

  ‘I understand, mamzelle.’ Behind the bars of the jalousies, the daylight was fading. January was ready to agree to nearly anything, to reach the Casita while daylight lingered in the sky.

  Visigoth still looked doubtful, but took the pistol in one hand, and picked up the lamp from the sideboard with the other. ‘What M’am Aurelié’s gonna say, I don’t know.’

  ‘Stay with Jules,’ said January to Charlotte. ‘And follow my instructions about the medicines. We’ll return, and tell you what we’ve found.’

  And hope to goodness, he reflected, limping painfully from the room in Visigoth’s wake, that I can find something – anything – that means something over there.

  Other than the absence of anything that means anything.

  Neither Visigoth – climbing into the boat with lamp and pistol – nor Charlotte, bending already over Jules again, noticed that January pocketed both spoons.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘That thing loaded?’

  ‘Oh, hell, no!’ Visigoth paused in his rowing as the sinuous mottled shape of a copperhead slipped by them in the water. The rain had ceased, but the silver-gray sheets of cloud overhead still spoke of storm. The wind tasted of the sea. Far off, above the flooded ciprière, a thin line of smoke marked where some swamp trapper or slave stealer had found an Indian mound high enough to support a dry camp. ‘You in the house last night?’