02 Fever Season bj-2

by Barbara Hambly

  "Don't tell me the girl's going to give you problems?" Livia turned immense, wine brown eyes upon her son.

  "I don't think so." January kept his voice low and glanced at the half-open bedroom door. "But she's in for a good deal of pain and struggle, I think."

  "Hmph." There was a world of, Not like my pain, in the single expulsion of her breath. "Fine time for that other girl of mine to be lollygagging in town. Therese, extinguish some of these candles! The waste that goes on in this house is shocking. And beeswax, too! I don't see how M'sieu Viellard puts up with it. I suppose you think you need to fetch him."

  "Someone should," said January. "It should be..."

  "I can manage here," his mother cut him off coolly. "How far along is she? Is that all? Phlosine"-She looked around, but the girl had vanished fairylike into her friend's bedroom-"Never there when you need them. No more sense than butterflies." She turned her cool gaze back to her son. "You can't suppose that any of those girls are going to be admitted anywhere near a ball at the St. Clair, do you?"

  As if, he thought, she hadn't been one of those girls herself.

  When he left she was ordering Madame Clisson and Th?r?se to bring in two dining-room chairs and a plank, to approximate a birthing-chair if Olympe didn't arrive in time.

  The Hotel St. Clair stood amid lush plantations of banana, jasmine, willow, and oak some distance back from the lakefront; but its galleries opened to both the prospect and the breezes that came off the water.

  As he and the groom Cyrus approached the graceful block of brick and whitewashed stucco that was the main hotel, January saw that colored paper lanterns were suspended from the galleries and smudges of lemongrass and tobacco burned near all the windows against the ever-present mosquitoes. Though it was by this time nearly nine o'clock, well after the hour that entertainments began, as he came up the garden's white shell path he heard no music, only the dull muttering of voices, and an occasional woman's exclamation of anger and outrage.

  The first-floor gallery was thronged with little knots of people, the men in black or gray or blue evening dress, the women in the pale-tinted silks of summer wear-and the looped, knotted, wired, and lace-trimmed hairstyles they favored these days that made January wonder despairingly if women had taken leave of their senses in the past ten years-sipping negus and lemonade from trays circulated by white-coated waiters.

  "Honestly, the woman deserves to be horsewhipped!" wailed someone buried to her chin in a snowbank of lace, whom January vaguely recognized as an aunt (cousin?) of Phlosine Seurat's protector. Through his mother and Minou he was being reintroduced to the interlocking webs of Creole society gossip.

  "Well, what can you expect of Americans?" returned her escort, as January skirted the shell path under the gallery. He sought the inevitable refreshment tables, whose colored waiters he could approach without violating anybody's sensibilities.

  "Well, we know who's responsible, anyway," muttered another woman, patting the yellow roses in her hair under an extravagant Apollo knot. "And her husband only dead a week Wednesday!"

  "I always said she was a cold hussy..."

  "I've heard she doesn't have shoes on her feet, poor thing..."

  "And well served, I say! I'm told she led the poor man a dreadful life..."

  "... gambled away every sou..."

  "... no more than twenty-five cents on the dollar, they say!"

  At the far end of the wide gallery that fronted the lake January spotted the buffet, framed in a glowing galaxy of hanging lanterns, candles, and potted ferns. As he approached, above the growl of the crowd he finally heard music, a wistful planxty spun like gold thread from a single violin. He followed it to its source. The violinist perched tailor-fashion on one of the tall stools set behind the buffet for the use of the waiters, a bottle of champagne within easy reach and a dreamy expression in his black-coffee eyes. The gallery wasn't particularly high at that point, and January was a tall man. He caught the balusters, put a foot on the edge of the gallery, and swung himself up. One of the waiters called out, "Well, here's an answer to M'am Viellard's prayer now. You bring your music with you, Maestro?"

  "I'm looking for Monsieur Viellard." January stepped over the rail. "What's happening here?"

  The violinist set aside his instrument and generously offered him the bottle of Madame Viellard's best champagne. "Departed in command of a force to rescue the captives," he reported. Hannibal Sefton's white face was a trifle haggard but he seemed in better health than when January had seen him a week ago. With his long brown hair tied back in a green velvet ribbon and his shabby, oldfashioned coat, the fiddler had the look of something strayed from a portrait painted half a century ago. "He armed his trained servants, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen; and pursued them into Dan. The guests turned up half an hour ago to discover that the Committee in charge of the Musicale for the Benefit of the Reverend Micajah Dunk had hired away every musician but me and Uncle Bichet. Madame Viellard's fit to burst a corset string and she's gone to the Washington Hotel-with Our Boy Henri in tow-to get them back."

  January swore. "I'd have thought that at this time of year there were at least enough musicians in town for two concerts on the same evening. Even if one of them does have to feature Philippe de Coudreau on the clarinet."

  Hannibal winced at the mention of one of the worst musicians of the rather slender selection available, even at the best of times, in New Orleans, and shrugged. "You reckon without the necessity of showing up the Americans. Madame Viellard heard that the Committee to Buy a Church for Micajah Dunk was having a Musicale to raise money-and Dunk being a hellfire lunatic who believes the Devil is French makes it all worse-and moved her concert and ball up to the same evening, to make sure that anybody with any pretentions to society in Milneburgh came to her party and didn't drop money at the Musicale when the collection plate went around. That would have settled the Musicale's hash, except that the Committee that's running it is headed by a lady rejoicing in the name of Emily Redfern, who's damned if she's going to let herself get shown up by French heathens who keep the Sabbath the way people in Boston keep the Fourth of July. The result being that Mrs. Redfern upped her Musicale to include an orchestra that would shame the Paris Opera."

  He poured out a glass of champagne for January; he drank his own from the bottle. "La Redfern offered me twice what Madame Viellard did-enough to keep me in opium for weeks. I strongly suspect old Reverend Hellfire isn't going to get a whole lot of money once expenses are met, but I also suspect that's no longer the point."

  "Wonderful." January sighed, too used to the rivalries between Creole society and the lately come Americans to even attempt to argue the matter logically. Maybe Ma dame Lalaurie had been trying to pick her rival Redfern's pocket.

  "So if you've got your music with you, Maestro," added Uncle Bichet, a thin old freedman who still bore on his face the tribal scarrings of the African village where he'd been born, "I opine you.can make a good five dollar this evenin'-or ten, if you want to walk over by the Washington and play the piano there."

  "Not this evening." January reflected ruefully that tonight was the only occasion in the past ten years on which he stood to make more from his medical skills than from his piano playing. "But I do need to go to the Washington, if that's where Monsieur Viellard's to be found. Hannibal, can I beg your assistance?" At a Creole society ball, January knew, a man of color could enter without problems, provided he knew his place and kept to it. But the matter would almost certainly be otherwise at a function given largely by Americans.

  They collected Cyrus and the horses from the courtyard in the front of the hotel. As the three men walked the crushed-shell path along the lakefront toward the Wash ington Hotel, January asked, "What's Madame Redfern doing running the Committee? She's newly a widow and just over being sick, at that."

  Hannibal shrugged. He had a fresh bottle of Madame Viellard's champagne in hand, but aside from a slight lilt to his well-bred, Anglo-Irish French he di
dn't show the wine's effect-not that he ever did unless well and truly in the wind. "If you know that much about her you'll know of her determination to figure in society-society as Americans understand it, that is. They're a repellently godly lot."

  Away from the hotels the darkness lay warm and silken, thick with the smell of water and decaying foliage, and the drumming of cicadas in the trees.

  "What else do you know about her?"

  "Redfern's late lamented owned a plantation down the river from Twelve-Mile Point and, as you say, has just shuffled off this mortal coil. But since God has almost universally been known to make exceptions to social rules if you hand His Representatives enough money, I suppose it's perfectly acceptable for her to carry on whatever chicanery necessary for the good of the Church. You thinking of marrying La Redfern for her money? I toyed with the notion but gave it up."

  January laughed. "Just curious. A friend of mine had a run-in with her." He wondered if there were any way of getting up to Spanish Bayou to have a look at the little house on Black Oak.

  "Just as well." Hannibal sighed. "The Redfern plantation's on the block for about a quarter its worth, for debts -the man owed money to everyone in town except me and she's selling off the slaves for whatever they'll fetch. They don't think her creditors are going to realize thirty cents on the dollar."

  "Twenty-five," said January, mindful of the conversation he'd overheard.

  "Ah. Well. There you have it. So much for cutting a figure in society." He took a long pull from the bottle, a dark silhouette against the gold-sprinkled lapis of the lake.

  Cyrus Viellard, walking behind with both horses on lead, added, "I hear she still got that little place next by Spanish Bayou, that they can't sell for debt cos of some way her daddy tied it up." He spoke diffidently, as was his place. "Michie Fazende and Michie Calder, that was owed money, they're fit to spit.` But it won't do her no good neither, cos it ain't a farm or anything like that."

  Just a place where she could conceal poison from her husband, thought January, as they mounted the rear steps of the Washington Hotel and made their way through the kitchen quarters to where a waiter said they'd find "all them ladies havin' a to-do."

  It was always difficult to get more than a general impression of a woman in the deep mourning of new widowhood. Entering the ballroom built behind the Washington Hotel, January had an impression of a stout little figure of about Cora Chouteau's height but approximately twice the girl's slight weight. Though the ballroom was illuminated as brilliantly as myriad oil lamps would permit, black crepe and veils hid everything of her except the fact that she was on the verge of poverty: despite considerable making over to lower the waist and the addition of far more petticoats than the skirt had originally been designed to accommodate, Mrs. Redfern's weeds were about fifteen years out of fashion. As January approached-with a proper air of deference-he had a vague view of a pale, square face and fair hair under the veils, but his clearest impression of her was her voice, sharp as the rap of a hammer. She was speaking English to a purpling and indignant Madame Viellard.

  "I'm sorry if you feel that way, Mrs. Viellard, but as I've explained to you before, the musicians signed a contract." Mrs. Redfern jerked her head to indicate a slender, gray-clothed man, like an anthropomorphized rat, hovering at her side. "Mr. Fraikes drew it up and it does specify that it is legally binding no matter what the date-"

  "What is she saying?" All her chins aquiver, Madame Viellard turned to her son. Henri was a fat, fair, bespectacled man in his early thirties whose sheeplike countenance amply attested the relationship. "Does that woman dare tell me that the men I hired for my own party are forbidden by law to play?"

  "It's the contract, Mother," explained Henri Viellard in French. "It invalidates even a prior agreement. I'm sure the men didn't read it before signing. It isn't usual-"

  "Isn't usual! Who ever heard of musicians signing a contract! They should never have done so! I paid them to play, and play they shall!"

  Ranged among the buffet tables, a group of ladies in mourning or half-mournirig-the fever had as usual struck hardest in the American community-observed the scene with whispers and gestures concealed behind black lace fans. With the utmost air of artless coincidence, they jockeyed among themselves for a position next to the short, burly, rather bull-like man in their midst. His self-satisfied expression accorded ill with his ostentatiously plain black clothing: presumably the Reverend Micajah Dunk. On the other side of the buffet the musicians themselves were gathered, every violinist, cellist, coronetist, clarionetist, and flautist January had ever encountered in nearly a year of playing balls and recitals in the city since his return last November. They clutched their music satchels and looked profoundly uneasy, and who could blame them? They played for both Americans and Creoles, turn and turn about. If they fell seriously afoul of Madame Viellard they could lose half their income, and if of Mrs. Redfern, the other half.

  Hannibal sidled over to an excessively turned-out American gentleman in a cutaway coat with a watch chain like a steamboat hawser. "Sharp practice," the fiddler commented in English. "Making them sign a contract."

  The man spat a stream of tobacco juice in the general direction of the sandbox in the corner. "Got to be sharp to stay in business, friend." The ballroom was hazy, not only with the mosquito-smudges burning in the windows but with cigar smoke, and stank of both it and expectorated tobacco.

  "Mrs. Redfern's a better businessman than poor Otis was, if you ask me," added another man, stepping close.

  He had a weaselly face and an extravagant mustache, and spoke with the accent of an Englishman. "Of course, the same could be said of my valet. Pity her father's no longer with us. Damn shame, her being sold out like that, but it would have happened anyway."

  "Anyone know what's being done with her slaves?" asked somebody else. "She had a few right smart ones." "Like the one ran off with the money Otis got from selling those six boys in town two weeks ago?"

  The American spat again.

  "Damn fool, Otis, insisting that money be paid him cash, not a bank draft or credit-but that's the man for you! Hubert Granville tells me-"

  "I hear she didn't get but four-five hundred for good cane hands. Damn shame." The American looked at January, and said to Hannibal, "That your boy? Looks like a prime hand. They're paying eleven, twelve hundred apiece for good niggers up in the Missouri Territory. I could give you a good price for him."

  "My friend," said Hannibal gently, "is a free man. We're here with a message for Mr. Viellard."

  "Oh." The American shrugged as if the matter were of little moment. "No offense meant." He was still looking at January as if calculating price. January had to lower his eyes, and his hand closed hard where it lay hidden in the pocket of his coat.

  "None taken." The softness of his own voice astonished January, as if he listened to someone else and thought, How can he be so docile? What kind of man is he?

  Again he wondered why he had left Paris, except that to have remained there would have cost him his sanity from pain and grief.

  Evidently some compromise was reached among Mrs. Redfern; her lawyer, Mr. Fraikes; and Madame Viellard.

  Henri Viellard escorted his mother in queenly dudgeon toward the ballroom door, and Mrs. Redfern bustled importantly back to relate the results, whatever they were, to the committee of widows basking in the radiance of the Reverend Dunk. January noticed how the Reverend clasped Mrs. Redfern's mitted hands and bent his head close down to hers as they spoke, like an old friend.

  He guessed that money had changed hands somewhere.

  Hannibal touched Henri Viellard's sleeve as he passed, and drew him aside in the carved square arch of the ballroom door. "Monsieur Viellard?" said January. "I've come from Mademoiselle Janvier's house."

  He did not mention that he was Madamoiselle Janvier's brother. He'd met Viellard before but wasn't sure the man remembered him, or remembered that he was Minou's brother. It wasn't something a protector wanted to know abou
t his pla??e.

  But Viellard turned pale at his words, gray eyes behind the heavy slabs of spectacle lenses widening with alarm. "Is she all right? Has she...? I mean..."

  "She's started labor, yes," said January softly. "I don't anticipate there being real danger, but it's going to be difficult for her, and she's in a good deal of pain. I'm going back there as quickly as I can. And if something does go wrong, I think you should be there."

  "Of course." The young planter propped his spectacles with one chubby forefinger-their lenses were nearly half an inch thick and the weight of them dragged them down the film of sweat on his nose. "It's..

  . it's early, isn't it? Does she seem well? I'll be-"

  "Henri." His mother's voice spoke from the hall. "Do come along. Our guests will be waiting."

  Henri poised, frozen, lace-edged handkerchief clutched in hand, eyes flicking suddenly back to January, filled with indecision, grief, and fathoms-deep guilt. Then he looked back at his mother.

  "Come along, Henri." Madame Viellard did not raise her voice, and though no woman of breeding would have held out hand or arm for any man, even her son, merely the gaze of those protruding, pewter-colored eyes was like the peremptory yank of a chain.

  Viellard dabbed at his lips. "I'll be there when I can." His eyes, looking across at January's, begged for understanding. "You'll tell her?"

  "I'll tell her."

  Dominique was in hard labor all night. Weakening, exhausted, propped in the birthing-chair by her friends and her mother, she clung when she could to her brother's big hands. Only once, when she was laid back on her bed half-unconscious to rest between contractions, did she whisper Henri Viellard's name.