02 Fever Season bj-2

by Barbara Hambly

  "Madame Pellicot, I... I thought Marie-Neige was in school in town. There hasn't been a problem... ?"

  "Problem?" She sniffed, and at his gesture of invitation crossed the threshold in a swish of crinoline. "I don't know how much you know about that stuck-up hussy Vitrac, but I never trusted her from the very start. And the thought that I'd leave my poor little one at some school in town at this time, like some other women I could mention..."

  "What happened?" He took the crock of jambalaya without being aware of it, stood stupid in the middle of the room with it in his hands.

  "What happened? The lazy slut let three of those poor little girls die-three of them! What their mothers can have been thinking of to leave them there with her..." Like you did all summer?

  "Mama... "

  "Hush, darling, about things you know nothing of." Madame Pellicot turned back to January, bristling with indignation. "Well, I should have known, but of course she was sly, and I wanted my dearest Marie-Neige to have all the very best. But I never felt comfortable with it. I always felt uneasy. I-"

  "What happened?"

  "Really, Ben, you don't need to take that tone. And set that jambalaya down. It's hot and you're like to drop it." She unpinned her hat from her tignon, straightened the neck-ruffle of her dress. "I took Marie-Neige out of that dreadful place yesterday. The woman was a complete fraud, I knew it from the first."

  "Mama... "

  "Hush, darling, you know that I'm right. And don't pick at your glove buttons; those gloves cost seventy-five cents. And I was right," she added, pausing on her way to the bedchamber. "Not enough that she was harboring a runaway - "

  "That's a lie! Where did you hear that?" Cold congealed in him, like steel shot behind his breastbone.

  "A lie, is it?" Pellicot planted her hands on her ample hips. "A lot you know of it, out here, M'sieu! The police came and got her yesterday, and a good thing it was that I'd been warned to take my dearest Marie-Neige out in onr. And the things they found out about her, once they turned that school of hers inside out. Stealing her investment money, shorting the girls on food... No wonder the poor things couldn't survive the fever! I only wonder my poor little darling didn't starve, although really, dear," she lifted an admonitory finger to her poor little darling, "Now that you're back with your mama you'll have to do something about your weight. Gentlemen are not attracted to young ladies whose waists are above eighteen inches, and a round face is never kissed, you know..."

  "That's a lie," said January softly. "It isn't true. Rose - Mademoiselle Vitrac-she does the best she can with what she has, but she would never steal money."

  Pellicot's eyes narrowed. "And how well do you know Mademoiselle Vitrac, pray? Marie-Neige," she added sharply, as the girl began to speak again, "maybe it's best that you run along to the cottage, if you can't learn to be seen and not heard. And don't let me find you've eaten so much as a morsel until I get there! Really, you've simply turned into a little piglet since you were at that school.

  "It will take me months to undo the damage that vache has done," she continued, as Marie-Neige obediently stepped through the front door and retreated down the shell path toward New York Street.

  "And I refuse to argue the matter with you, Ben." She took off her lace mitts. Her hands, though fine, were large and competent looking, with nails polished like jewelers' work. She disposed of her reticule, picked up Henri Viellard's dark plush coat and settled it over the back of a chair, and passed into the bedroom as she spoke, checking the water in the pitcher and moving Henri's spectacles to a safer place as she went. She paused for a moment, looking down at the empty wicker cradle, and her eyes met January's over it. He saw in them the shine of tears. Then she turned away again and stood beside Dominique's bed, folding back her pink voile sleeves.

  "Be so good as to go down to Decker's store for ice, would you, Ben? There's some come in on the boat from town, at twenty-five cents a pound. Take some money out of that cochon's purse for it." She nodded down at the sleeping Henri. "Left word for his mother at the ball last night he had a migraine, I've heard, and she's fit to be tied this morning, for, of course, she wasn't fooled a moment-he slipped away when she was in the cloakroom."

  She shook her head, and leaning down, touched Minou's cheeks with the backs of her fingers. "And speak to Mr. Bailey at the Pontchartrain-the magistrate, you know," she added. "Poor Minou. We'll pull her through." And then, as though ashamed of being caught in sympathy, she went on briskly, "Run along now. And if you see your mother, tell her I'm here."

  It was another thirty-six hours before January could leave Milneburgh. During that time, unable to leave Minou's side, he was forced to listen to Agnes Pellicot discuss the shutting-down of Rose Vitrac's school with his mother, with Catherine Clisson, and with any of Dominique's friends who came to offer help and support. By the time his sister's fever broke, shortly after noon on Tuesday, January could be in no doubt that Rose Vitrac's school had been searched by the police, though rumors varied as to whether Rose herself had been arrested. But everyone who had heard anything of the matter seemed to agree that Mademoiselle Vitrac had harbored a runaway slave, and that three girls in the school had died, just as if, thought January furiously, people weren't dying in every street and building of the town.

  As darkness was falling he boarded the steam-train for town, jostling along in the rear carriage listening to the whine of mosquitoes in the dimness of the swamps.

  The raised Spanish house on Rue St. Claude was closed like a fist, lightless on the moonless street. The stenches of burning hooves, of sickness, of privies clotted the damp air like glue. The bell on the cathedral was chiming nine. Somewhere a man called, "Bring out your dead." January walked on, regardless of the curfew, down Rue St. Philippe and along Rue Chartres, past mute dark houses with the planks propped up beside their doors, past pharmacies whose windows glowed with plague-red jars and bottles, his shadow monstrous on the walls.

  "What you doin' out this time o' night, boy?" demanded the sergeant at the desk, looking up as January came through the Cabildo's great double doors.

  Before leaving Minou's he had changed again into his black coat, his waistcoat and beaver hat, knowing he'd need to be perceived as a free man of color despite the blackness of his skin, which said "slave."

  Now he took his papers from his pocket and said in his most Parisian French, "My name is January, sir.

  I'm one of the surgeons working at Charity." And I'm not your goddamned boy. "I've been in Milneburgh with a sick woman and child. I've just returned to learn that three of my patients at Mademoiselle Vitrac's school on Rue St. Claude have died, and I'm trying to learn something of the matter. I understand that I might find Mademoiselle Vitrac here?"

  Not in the Cabildo, he prayed, sickened at the image of Rose in those filthy cells that flanked the gallery, among the madwomen and prostitutes. Not here. He had spent a night once in the oven-hot, verminous cells: he would not have wished such a thing on his worst foe.

  But he kept his voice impersonal, his demeanor respectful of the two or three blue-clothed Guards who lounged on the stone benches of the corner office. The sergeant at the desk-a square-faced, square-handed American-shuffled around in his papers. Outside in the Place d'Armes, voices lifted in angry shouts:

  "You're a fool, and can't dance!"

  "Consarn if I don't make daylight shine through your gizzard quicker'n lightnin' can run around a potato patch!"

  "Is Lieutenant Shaw available, sir? He'll vouch for me. Please tell him Benjamin January is asking after him, if you would, please."

  "Benjamin January?" The sergeant raised his head again. He looked sweaty and worn, piggy eyes sunk in bruises of sleeplessness and jaw scrummed with two days' growth of beard. "Got a note here for you.

  Mademoiselle Vitrac was released yesterday morning. I don't know the right of it, but charges against her were dropped."

  "What was she charged with?"

  But the man only shook his head, and held
out to him a folded sheet of paper between stubby fingers.

  "She left this. Seemed to think you'd come here lookin' for her. Looks like she was right."

  His eyes followed January suspiciously as January carried the paper to one of the oil lamps that burned in brackets around the walls: They did little to illumine the murk, but holding the paper close, January was able to read.

  The letter was written in Latin.

  Of course, thought January, fingering the much-thumbed edges of the page. They'd try to read it. No wonder the sergeant was suspicious. He wondered if someone like Monsieur Tremouille, the Chief of Police, had succeeded.

  Monsieur janvier If you receive this you will have heard something of what has befallen. The police came yesterday, and found hidden in the building a string of pearls and a quantity of money that they claim links me to a runaway slave, whom they likewise claim was a girl I knew in my youth.

  Why didn't you get rid of the pearls? thought January furiously. I told you to throw them in the river! At least she'd taken into account the possibility that they'd show the note to someone who had been to a proper school.

  The day before their arrival, Antoinette, Victorine, and Genevi?ve all succumbed, at last, to the fever. I sent word to you, but you had already left for Milneburgh, and later events prevented me from writing you there. Occupied as I was with them I could not give my full mind to matters when Madame Pellicot and Madame Moine came to remove their daughters from the school, though I understand that rumors have begun that I speculated with the school's money. These rumors are untrue, and I am at a loss to understand how or why they began.

  The fact remains that I am ruined. I understand people are even blaming me for the deaths of my poor girls. I know it will be impossible for me to open the school again, even should I find pupils. At the moment I have no idea where I will or can go, or what I can do.

  I may have little experience with the ways of the world, but I do know that calumny is a contagion far more to be dreaded than our friend Bronze john, and even your slight association with me in caring for the girls might be held against you by the malicious. Therefore I ask your indulgence. I know that I owe you the money we agreed upon for the girls' care...

  [What money? A moment later he realized that the sentence was for the benefit of those who might read the letter, and wonder why else he would wish to seek her out.] ... but please, for your own sake, do not attempt to locate me. I will send the money to you in good time. I do not forget all the kindnesses you have done.

  Thank you for the help you gave me with the girls. Without your timely assistance, matters would be far worse than they were. I am sorry that I cannot thank you in person, but you must see, as I do, that it is better we never meet again.

  The letter was signed, not in Latin, but in Greek: more difficult for January to read, but impossible, he thought, for others to spy out.

  He recognized it as a quote from Euripides. (Greek script unavailable) It took him a few moments to translate:

  Nothing can come between true friends. Rose

  Fourteen

  "Obviously, someone talked."

  Hannibal folded up his copy of Emma and leaned over to trim the tallow lights that transformed his little tent of mosquito-bar into a glowing amber box. Returning to his mother's house, with the dense, hot smell of storms brewing over the Gulf, January saw the thread of light beneath the door of Bella's room; even on those nights when he was sober and not working, Hannibal seldom slept before three.

  "My guess is Isabel Moine, who never wanted to be at that school and hated learning of any sort. I know she'd written her parents two or three times asking for them to come and get her, and they wouldn't-Victorine told me this, one night when she couldn't get to sleep."

  His brow pinched with compassion at the memory of the three girls. "They took a turn for the worse-well, Antoinette was losing ground all the way along-and they went quickly, in spite of everything Rose and I could do. Rose took it-hard."

  "Do you know where she is?"

  Hannibal shook his head. "I went down there Sunday afternoon, and they said they'd released her, in spite of the evidence being pretty damning. Shaw wasn't there, and nobody would tell me anything. I don't know what happened to change everybody's mind."

  He reached down to the pottery jug beside the bed and offered some to January, who was sitting on the end of the bed. It was ginger-beer, lukewarm but not unpleasant. Far off to the north above the lake thunder growled. Flares of sheet lightning outlined the shutters of the room's single French window.

  "How long was she in the Calabozo?" Part of him didn't want to hear.

  "Just the one night. Shaw did what he could for her-not that there's much one can do for someone in the circumstances."

  January shut his eyes at the memory of the crawling mattresses, the stinking heat. At the thought of the fever, should it break out in those tiny, filthy cells.

  Not Rose. Not Rose.

  "The first night they took her, she wrote out a paper giving me quitclaim to her books-backdated to a week before her arrest, so they can't be seized in payment of her debts when they foreclose on the building. I've brought some of them over here already." Hannibal nodded. January had been vaguely aware of what, in the dense darkness, he had taken for packing boxes in the corners of the little room.

  Peering through the gloom, he saw now that they were stacks of books, piled crazily on top of one another.

  "There's more in your room. And all the science texts and atlases yet to bring over. I've tried to find her,"

  Hannibal added. "It was a long night, Friday. Genevi?ve must have died a little before sunset, but neither of us knew it at the time. Victorine and Antoinette both went just before dawn. As I said, Rose took it hard. I didn't like to leave her but she insisted, saying she needed to sleep. I went over there as soon as I was awake Saturday afternoon and found her place locked tight, with police seals on it. So I went to the Cabildo and she asked me to bring her some things, some clean clothing and a comb and brush, and some paper and ink-that's when she gave me the books-and she told me what happened. The police evidently walked right in and went to the compartment in her desk where she had the pearls..."

  "Why didn't she get rid of them?" moaned January. Somehow, it was all he could think of to say.

  "Well," said Hannibal, "I did ask her that. She had some kind of idea of faking Cora's death to get pursuit off her and using the pearls as evidence of identity. Only, of course, the girls' illness intervened. She wouldn't write to you, and made me promise not to do so either. She said she had a note from you that morning saying that your sister was ill. Is Minou better?"

  January nodded wearily. "Her baby died."

  "Her first." The fiddler closed his eyes, as if seeing again the three girls in the stifling attic. "I'm sorry."

  "It happens." January spoke without bitterness. His mind was full of disjointed pictures, reaching back and back through the previous days: Henri Viellard, asleep in the chair beside Minou's bed, clasping the hand of the sleeping woman. The soft chatter of the women in Minou's front room, and how they would come to keep him and Minou and one another company.

  Whores, white society would call them, or those who didn't understand. But they looked after one another. "Her friends are with her. I couldn't leave before this morning. Maybe it's best. that neither of you wrote."

  The pain in him was a hot weight, a fever he could not shake. A slow roll of thunder shuddered the air.

  "I don't know," he whispered. He felt helpless, battered. Madame Clisson and Marie-Anne and Iph?g?nie had been there for Minou. Who had been there for Rose? "I don't know. Was she all right in the jail?"

  "Well, she was pretty stunned," said Hannibal. "She said she kept thinking she was dreaming, or that this was all happening to someone else. This was after she started hearing the rumors about the money, too."

  "What happened about that?" January looked up angrily. I was warned, Agnes Pellicot had said. "Who says
that?"

  Hannibal shook his head. "I only know it's being said. They locked up the school the day she was arrested-her creditors, and her backers, I mean, demanding it as an asset. Their agents, really, because, of course, all the Forstalls and Bringiers and McCartys are still at the lake. Hence the backdated quitclaim on the books. I've been sneaking them out a few at a time for the past three nights. Most of them are her personal possessions, anyway, not the school's. She's got a wonderful volume of the Lyric Poets in the original-I haven't seen this edition since I left Dublin.

  Half-gone the night, and youth going~

  I lie alone.

  "She hasn't even been able to get in and get her own clothing; I looked. I've asked around the Swamp... ."

  "She'd never go there." January hadn't meant the words to come out so harshly. He closed his fist against the urge to strike his friend across the face.

  The fiddler's coffee black eyes were weary within the bruised erosion of lines. "No woman goes there," he said quietly. "But a lot of them end up there all the same. As it happens," he went on, as January opened his mouth again to protest, "she didn't, or hasn't yet. Myself, I think she's left the town completely."

  January was silent. I am ruined, the note had said. Every penny I own is tied up in this building... And after all he felt for her-after running off to try to clear Cora for her-he hadn't been there when she most needed him. Only came in to view the wreckage, like the horrified survivor of a Euripides play. As he had come in on Ayasha, too late.

  "Where?" January meant to speak a sentence. Only a word came out.

  "Baton Rouge," guessed Hannibal promptly. "Though that's a little close to New Orleans, if she was planning on opening another school. Maybe Charleston. Maybe New York."

  "Where would she get the money?" And Hannibal only shook his head. "There has to be some way to find her."

  "And what?" Hannibal asked. Lightning flashed again, white and cold on his thin, lined face, overwhelming the small warmth of the candle.